


The Stars Are Lonely

by PilotFlux



Series: Iron Infinity [1]
Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, Avengers: Infinity War - Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Canon Rewrite, F/M, Hope, Hope vs. Despair, Hurt Tony Stark, Isolation, Lonely SpaceStark, Mass Death, Milano Lore That Im Making Up, Outer Space, Parent Tony Stark, Trauma, amongst other tearyeyed things, but he's on his way home!, sorry folks, space, the snap, this is also not a fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23163811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilotFlux/pseuds/PilotFlux
Summary: Tony realized that he was angry. Angry at Thanos, at himself, at whatever strings decided fate, because they didn’t deserve this. The stars didn’t deserve to be lonely; the planets didn’t deserve to have their sunsets fall for nobody.Peter Parker didn’t deserve to die before he’d even had a chance to live.Tony’s hand’s fell from his face, hanging idly by his sides. The universe didn’t deserve the hand it had been dealt; But it sure as hell deserved someone trying to fix it.//In an AU to Avengers: Endgame, Thanos is even more of dick, and wipes out ninety percent of all life in the universe. Left alone on Titan, a largely uninjured but emotionally distraught Tony Stark tries to make it back to Earth- But his only form of transport is inoperable. Will he muster the strength to make it back to his home, and, more importantly, find a reason to stay?
Relationships: Clint Barton & Scott Lang, Clint Barton & Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Scott Lang & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Series: Iron Infinity [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677427
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	1. Space Smells Like Burnt Steak

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Due to the fact that I have way too much free time on my hands, I'm going to write a relatively short fic over the next few days. Don't expect too much, I'm no expert.  
> Also, if anyone would be willing to beta read stuff for me, I'd be very grateful. I'm pretty sure some of this shit makes no sense half the time, so another set of eyes would be nice.  
> Anyway, I do hope you enjoy.

Space smells like burnt steak. Like oxidized metal, and carbon, and the sweet, tangy feeling of possibilities. When he was trapped aboard the _Milano_ , he spent hours inhaling that scent. He’d open the airlock and keep a pile of someone’s clothes in it (he tried not to think about who’s clothes they were, because he knew that they were all dead), and let space coat them. Let the feeling soak into their fibers, like it had soaked into him.

Tony always wanted to go to space. Really, in the same way any futurist inventor did. Because it was the final frontier, the space in which their lives would unfold. As he saw it, somewhat selfishly, much of the world refused to accept that- How small they all were.

He didn’t like acknowledging that smallness, but he knew it was true. He was angry other people didn’t see it, sometimes. Maybe bitter, really, because he felt alone with the thought.

It wasn’t that Tony wasn’t used to loneliness. He was. Ever since he was born, he’d practically _bathed_ in it. Even when he’d had Pepper, and Rhodey, and Happy, and all his friends, he was alone. He was always alone, because that’s the minimum energy state of his life. Alone, on a rock, floating in space, without _anything_ to tether him.

On longer nights, when he really couldn’t stand to look at the inky, velvety black any longer, he’d go back to the chest where he kept the clothes that were on him, that day on Titan. It took some rummaging, at first, (because he couldn’t look at it for long) but he’d find his wallet, and tucked into its’ main compartment, a little creased, was a picture of him and Pete, a posterity photo they’d taken for May. One of his hands was clenching a plaque, the other giving the kid rabbit ears. When he couldn’t stand the silence, he’d look really, really hard at the picture, and he’d run his thumb over Peter’s face, trying to remember what it was like to listen to the kid laugh, or whine, or stutter. He’d do that until he couldn’t stand to look at him anymore (because he couldn’t stand to live with his mistakes) and then he’d put the picture back, close the chest, and sleep.

That was life, now. Tony would cycle between sleep, stargazing, ship repairs, and Peter’s photo, never quite feeling anything. He knew he should, really. But there weren’t any quantifiable emotions, anymore- When Thanos snapped, ninety percent of life was gone. He was alone on Titan. He looked at the kids’ ashes before he left for what must have been hours, feeling a sorrow that he couldn’t even begin to quantify.

It felt like death. Real, true death. Worse than his parent’s funeral, worse than Obi’s betrayal, worse than Ho’ admittance on those canvas sacks in Afghanistan. And afterward, he didn’t feel anything. Not sorrow, or hope, or determination. Just nothing, all the time.

Maybe it was his fault. Tony was always alone, anyway. Maybe he deserved to be this- what was he, really? Emotionless husk sounded too dull, but then again, he wasn’t sure what dull meant anymore. Regardless, this felt right, in a way. To be alone, emotionally, physically, mentally, because that was his basic state, really. Maybe, by always knowing how small he was, he damned himself to this fate.

The _Milano_ isn’t a big ship. For Tony, alone in its quarters, it’s decently sized; but it clearly was made for more people (who are dead now, because you couldn’t stop him) to live in. He lives in the room closest to the engines, because the Xeon processors threw off a lot of heat, so the little energy he could generate could be saved as he slept. In the next room over (what he assumed to be Quill’s quarters, because they were decorated in 80’s paraphernalia, and had a massive collection of cassettes, none of which he played, because it reminded him of the music the kid would make him listen to) were his rations, or what little was left of them. It had a sink and bathroom that still worked, provided the water reprocessors didn’t break down, so he could at least shower if he wanted. Across the hull was the last two rooms, one of which was unoccupied. The other, furthest from where Tony slept, tucked into the rear of the ship, had a barrel with ashes in it.

He didn’t really know what he was going to do with all of them. For some reason, though, their presence made him feel less isolated, which was nice.

(Not less alone. Tony was always alone.)

There wasn’t a plan. Not anymore, at least. The first few months came with the attempt to refire the primary ion engines, but the reactor’s capacitors were damaged, so there wasn’t enough energy to kickstart them. He tried, a few times, to build makeshift batteries, but they didn’t hold for long enough. When he first realized there wasn’t any escape, Tony almost vomited, but thought better of it. He’d just eaten and wouldn’t dare waste nutrients. Instead, he fired the airlock again, and inhaled the scent of space for a few minutes. It didn’t make him feel any better, but the faint scent of metal reminded him of home, just a little bit. Funny enough, though, it also made him think of Pepper, and his addled mind lead that thought to pepperoni pizza, and then he threw up anyway, because the thought of his last meal with Peter brought his nausea over the edge.

∞

_“You sure you don’t need a napkin, kid?”_

_Peter’s shirt was soaked in pizza grease. Their favorite joint, Sully Jr.’s, never went light on the pepperoni, so their pies were always drenched in liquid fat. That was part of the charm, really._

_He’d laughed and shook his head, mouth stuffed with the crust of his most recent slice. “N fhanks, M’r. Srk.”_

_Tony had thrown a bundle at him anyway, feigning annoyance. “Chew with your damn mouth shut. DUM-E is horrible with a broom, and I’m not picking up globs of salvia-soaked bread.”_

_Peter sagged a bit at the chastisement but smiled anyway. He swallowed, dabbed some of the grease from the shirt, and went for another slice. “Hey, I’m not the one who always insists on ordering with extra cheese.”_

_“But you never protest it, either. Indecision is costly, kid.”_

_He just laughed, taking another bite. “Good luck using that as a defense when Pepper has to drag your ass to a hospital at fifty because your arteries are more clogged up than traffic over the Hudson.”_

_Tony snorted, crossing him arms once he polished off another slice of his own. “With you by my side, Pete? I’ll die of a heart attack_ long _before I reach my golden years.”_

_∞_

Sometimes, he doesn’t sleep. It honestly wasn’t for a lack of trying; Sleep was the only time Tony didn’t have to care about anything, so it was the best part of his day. But, there’s dark spots. When he spends four hours crying, for example, but he doesn’t know _why,_ the usually painless, provisional existence he lives gets stained. Like putting squid ink on a black canvas. It’s worse, somehow, when Tony does things he usually associates with feelings, but doesn’t actually _feel_ anything. Those are the days when he can’t imagine dropping into the sheets, because he doesn’t want to know what happens when his mind slips into dreams.

Today is a sleepless day. Earlier, when the scent of burnt steak vanished from an old long-sleeve he’d been cradling, Tony had shuffled over to the chest, intending to repeat his daily routine. But when he took out his jogging pants, he tossed them a little more violently than usual, and a little _plink_ rang out. It was his engagement ring.

Pepper hates (hated?) big jewelry, so he went simple. A polished chrome band. That’s it. Such a tiny, simple thing. He knew it wasn’t the shock value of the thing that mattered, it was the symbolism, and that’s why he’d gotten it; To Tony, that polished, silvery glint looks like the future. Like it could build towers that pierced the sky and build bridges across the sea.

As he cradled it, careful not to smudge the exterior with fingerprints, he thought that, maybe, _just maybe,_ it still could.

That day, when his usual sleep time came around, it wasn’t the fear of dreams that kept Tony from his bed. Rather, he just didn’t feel tired.

That was the first time he’d felt even a _miniscule fraction_ of hope in months. And he ran with it.

∞

The Mark L took Tony almost four hundred total waking hours of worktime to complete. He basically lived in the lab after Siberia, only stopping for bathroom breaks and donut runs. It had taken nearly fifty of those hours to just fit the nanotech into its casing- And a full week of almost no rest before it would form the actual armor. But, thanks to relentless effort (and seething hatred, because secretly, he was only building it to stop Rogers from shattering him again), it was the single most advanced suit he’d ever created- And, possibly, the single most sophisticated piece of engineering ever built.

That’s why it really, _really_ sucked to break it apart.

After working the math, Tony figured that he might be able to use the arc reactor as a catalyst to kickstart the engines. But only if he used the armor itself as a capacitor- Which would, inevitably, fry all of the nanomachines beyond repair. Bright side being, hopefully, he’d be able to make it to the nearest inhabited planet, Epsilon, and complete repairs for jumptravel.

Or, it would overload the ship’s systems, and he’d be left with no navigation, water filtration, heating, and shields, then would leave him to die of starvation, thirst, hypothermia, or maybe a mix of all three.

He was trying not to think about that, though. 

The main ion engines in the ship operated using some kind of ionization process for Xeon he didn’t fully understand yet- But, according to the main computer, was fully operational. Tony theorized that the only reason the _Milano_ wasn’t yet capable of jumptravel was because whatever method it used to do so was damaged and made inoperable in the fight on Titan. If true, it meant that, as long as he could give the kickstart engine a sufficient enough surge to fire, while also spinning up the main engines, he could reach Epsilon in four days, six hours, fourteen minutes and twelve seconds. He had about enough food for the next week, so that wasn’t a worry- But water was.

The ship was often hot, and that meant he had to take in a lot of water that was lost through sweat. If his trick fried the purification system, he’d probably die of dehydration before reaching his destination, which would be… Undesirable, at best.

Problem is, there wasn’t a good way to store mass amounts of water. The ship had plenty of containers, sure, but none were big enough. For five days, he’d need about six and a half gallons of water- The only things that would keep that large of an amount would be the storage chests, and those aren’t watertight.

Then Tony remembered the barrel of ashes.

The thought made him sick to his stomach. He could move them, easily. But he hadn’t looked at them since he’d left, and he’d have to touch them.

Oh, God, he’d have to touch Peter’s ashes.

There wasn’t any other way, was there? He scanned through the ship’s inventory of containers in his mind- It took him a minute to narrow down his options. There weren’t any others. He could risk severe dehydration, but that would mean putting the plan in jeopardy.

Tony exhaled heavily, head buried in his hands as he dropped to the floor. The engagement ring was cold against the skin of his forehead; it’d taken residence on his ring finger after he began planning. The sensation of wearing it was the only thing maintaining his fragile optimism. He tried to remember back, way back, to the first time he’d slipped it on, after giving the matching one to Pepper. The sense of hope that had been flickering in his mind returned forcefully, and he took another deep breath, pressing his hands against his eye sockets.

The temptation to stop was worming its way into his head. He wouldn’t have to look at what remained of Peter, wouldn’t have to be reminded of the innocent people who’s lives were mauled, ripped apart before they could become something meaningful. He could throw the ring into the airlock and stop remembering. He could keep floating, drifting aimlessly, until time took the rest of him away- Until he turned to dust, just like them.

The temptation was there. It was there, and it was close, and more than anything, it was _easy._ He could just be done. He could go to sleep, forever, and never worry about this godforsaken universe and everything wrong with it again.

(But would you be able to rest?)

In front of him, past the _Milano_ ’s glass, space stretched on like a blanket. It was dotted with stars of all kinds, a patchwork of light knit from the most fundamental of things, from gravity and fusion and heat. Some of the stars, he knew, bathed planets in warmth. The closer Tony focused on the stars, the more he realized how lonely they must be, now. Ninety percent of all life in the universe was just _gone._ There would be some planets without any life left on them at all. Some worlds left dotted in towering structures, or huts, or maybe even nothing at all- No trace of the matter that made the universe feel and think.

The night sky would be lonely, now. The stars wouldn’t have anyone to say hello to, and the planets wouldn’t have any meaningful reason to rotate. Things would happen, still, days would pass and nights would come, because gravity doesn’t need people to work. But it wouldn’t matter if no one was there to see it.

Tony realized that he was _angry._ Angry at Thanos, at himself, at whatever strings decided fate, because they didn’t deserve this. The stars didn’t deserve to be lonely; the planets didn’t deserve to have their sunsets fall for nobody.

Peter Parker didn’t deserve to die before he’d even had a chance to live.

Tony’s hand’s fell from his face, hanging idly by his sides. The universe didn’t deserve the hand it had been dealt; But it sure as hell deserved someone trying to fix it.


	2. The Man And His Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoooooo boy. This is a long one. 5671 words long, actually. But for a three chapter story, it was a bit necessary.  
> I hope ya'll enjoy reading this. So far, I like writing it more than I do oneshots. Maybe more will come in the future.  
> For now, though, enjoy! Final chapter should be out in a few days.

Tony took a sewing class in college.

Plenty of people laughed at him for it; Hell, he’d even poked fun at himself over it. But it’s an invaluable skill to have- One day, he’d thought, an article of clothing would rip, or he’d need to shorten a pair of jeans that were just a _tad_ too long, and then those days of pinpricks would be worth it.

He never thought the skill would be put to use making bags for the ashes of a sixteen-year-old kid.

The layers between each person’s remains- Nebula, the three Guardians, Strange and Peter- were segmented by sheets of rusted scrap metal he’d pulled off long-dead wrecks on Titan. They’d done their job well enough. Peter’s, of course, were on top, (because it took him nearly an hour of staring before he was able to even touch them) followed by Quill, Drax, the bug lady’s, and the blue chick’s. Bit by bit, Tony scooped them into the makeshift sacks, tying the tops off with hand-written labels denoting to whom they belonged.

(If they’re dead, you might as well try to give what remains some semblance of respect.)

It didn’t take long before the barrel was empty, and ready to be filled. First, though, he took to cleaning out the chest. The jogging clothes he’d worn during the battle were ratty and singed, falling apart in places. He kept them around, figuring they might make useful scrap material in the future. His wallet, containing several credit cards, cash, and Peter’s photo, was set aside, too- The leather could be used to repair his shoes, if the planet he was trying to reach didn’t have a supply depot. The cards and cash we scrapped; There wasn’t much use for them, now. The picture with Peter got laminated with some spare packing tape and hung from his neck on a piece of string.

The bags fit nicely into the empty container, just spaced out enough to be tasteful while not making it feel more desolate than it already was. Atop the contents, Tony placed a letter, with instructions on where the case needed to go, should it be found by some wandering space pirates or what have you.

Once packed, the chest took the place of the barrel, tucked securely into one corner of the quarters and ratcheted down, as to minimize the chance its’ contents were disturbed. And, with the most grueling of today’s tasks behind him, Tony set off.

First order of business was prepping supplies. He’d be strapped into the command chair for most of the flight, only rising to use the restroom and briefly do a physical check on the engines and life support systems. So, water would need to be easy to access- A problem solved by the addition of a tube to the barrel, which could be sealed, effectively serving as a double plus-sized Camelpak. The food was packed into a compartment near his seat, broken up according to his minimum necessary caloric intake dictated by his BMR. The setup sure as hell wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would be efficient, which was a necessity. In the event his engines malfunctioned during the journey, he’d need to keep as much food as possible left over.

Then came the Mark L conversion.

The _Milano_ wasn’t exactly well-stocked in the way of tools; It had some wrenches and other basic repair kit, but nothing near the fine-tuned equipment Tony would need to build the capacitors he had originally planned. That made things… Significantly more difficult, and a hell of a lot riskier than he would’ve liked.

Without precise equipment, the nanomachines would have to be controlled into formation manually- Which meant he’d have to be _wearing_ the suit as it charged up. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal; the thing was built to withstand a particle collision and keep him intact, after all. But nothing about Tony’s situation at the moment was normal, and neither was the application of his arc reactor.

The M12 arc reactor the suit is built out of works by catching electrons in an electromagnetic loop, allowing them to be converted directly into electrical energy without the hassle of extra heat or fancy turbines. Normally, the electrons complete two cycles around the torus before being converted, which supplies beyond enough energy- But, in order for the kickstart to actually work, they’ll need to make _fourteen_ cycles. That’s 1,680 cycles per minute, which wanders dangerously close to producing deadly amounts of heat.

In order to wear the suit _and_ generate enough power, he’d risk cooking himself alive. At the very least, he’d pass out, no doubt from hyperthermia, and that’s only if he’s insulated, which would take away precious nanomachines from his task- Meaning the power would have to be upped, requiring more machines, which would, in turn, make him cook faster. It was quite the conundrum.

Tony grumped about it for a while, fussing around the ship, ensuring everything would be set for his voyage- Which is when he found the spacesuits.

Or, more accurately, the space _discs._ They’d all slid under a cabinet, probably knocked from their holsters by the fight. He counted seven in all, and decided he could use two; One for testing, and, hopefully, one for his fixit job.

Using a laser-read thermometer and a pile of thermite, he found their thermal insulation to be seventy-two percent- Pushing it, but if he was smart, it would work for just long enough to get the engine going.

The coordinates were already logged into the flight computer, because even a day of straying off course could mean running out of fuel, or worse, requiring another kickstart.

And Tony really, _really_ didn’t want to burn himself alive twice.

After a final systems check, he donned the reactor, allowing a thin smile to spread across his lips as the nanotech spread across his body, fitting perfectly over the spacesuit’s pearlescent glow. Without a refill of nanites after the battle, the armor was missing patches, looking a little more worse for wear than he’d like- But, it would work, and that’s all that mattered.

The cables he’d built fit seamlessly into the armor, liquid metal binding to the contacts. Six in total kept him near immobile; but he’d positioned himself just well enough to look out of the rear windows, at the terrifyingly bright stars and the wisps of their coronas, watching him like a sentinel in the void.

As the arc reactor spun up, the stars blurred, marred by the tears stroking down Tony’s face. The heat was already nearly unbearable- He was still only halfway in. As the popups in his HUD grew, their bars rapidly growing to fifty, sixty, seventy, ninety percent, Tony winced, grinding his teeth together in an effort to stave off the pain shocking his system.

When the graphs all showed 100% capacity, the stars smeared together into great, sky-spanning streaks of light, shooting off far past the edges of the window. Tony started a countdown, the seconds feeling like hours as he readied himself for the final surge.

_Three._

_Two._

_One._

The next thing he felt was the cold steel of the ships floor and, shortly after, the sweet tinge of blood in his mouth.

∞

The first thing Tony saw was a giant, looming orb hanging in front of the shift’s cockpit.

In a panic, he shot to his feet, rushing to the flight computer to ensure he’d remained on course- Which, luckily, he had. The orb was Epsilon, a relatively large planet marked as a cargo dock; He could only hope it had the ability to make repairs, too.

As he took a seat in the pilot’s chair, Tony’s eyes scanned over the menus and warnings that plastered the screens; In one corner, elapsed time was marked as two days, six hours, and four minutes.

He’d been unconscious for _two days._ That was more than half of his trip.

A quick self-check brought up no apparent injuries; It appeared that the spacesuit had done its job and prevented his insides from getting liquidized. There were no broken bones, despite the fact that he must’ve slid from the engine room in the rear to the cockpit stairs. He was lucky. Very, very lucky.

Tony wouldn’t be able to do a physical check on the engines for another few hours- His schedule was strict, and he already wasted precious calories in his sleep. So, taking a couple gulps of water, he settled in, ready for the journey ahead.

A diagnostics check revealed his little trick had worked- Almost too well, actually. The kickstart engine fired at nearly 110% of its capacity, launching the ship forward like a missile. From there, the ions and flight computer took control of the finer elements, keeping the ship aligned on course and providing negative thrust when some foreign objects were encountered- What the were, the logs didn’t show, but it didn’t look to be too big of a deal. Now, all he had to do was let himself drift, follow his schedule, and try really, _really_ hard not to die.

Not a big deal. Couldn’t be too hard, right?

The ration’s he’d chosen were thoroughly disgusting; He was limited to 1,200 calories a day, which in of itself was heavily restricted, especially after days of unconsciousness- Which in turn meant that the food had to be nutrient dense. That took the form of flavorless, chewy bars that went down like sawdust, and felt like solidified cement in his gut when finished. It was unpleasant but hey, so was the slop they gave him in Afghanistan, and he got out of that just fine.

Well, relatively.

As Tony nibbled away on one of his nutrient bars- He wouldn’t call it a _meal_ , no matter how many calories or grams of protein it had- The minutes ticked by into hours, Epsilon growing infinitesimally larger in his field of view. The sense of scale in space is still shocking; He’s traveling absurdly fast, but nothing is really getting bigger, especially directly in front of him.

There’s a metaphor in there, somewhere, but he’s too lazy and tired to decode it.

Finishing off the ratio, he stands, the vertebrae in his spine popping with one long, tiptoe-standing stretch before he leaves for an engine check. He’d missed the state of disarray of the main chamber in his scramble to reach the cockpit- Items were strew everywhere, most of the things that were once resting on the table tossed into corners and scattered over the floor. He considered cleaning it up but figured it a waste of time. After all, he wasn’t going to have any guests aboard.

(Not that it was his ship, either.)

The engine room wasn’t much better. Most things were bolted down or tucked securely into brackets, but the supercharge caused a couple of energy cables to pop from their places. Tony secured them, ensuring the contacts weren’t damaged, before moving on. 

His makeshift overflow cables where lying in shambles in the center of the room, torn apart by the high voltage. Not to far away, resting against a canister, was the remains of his arc reactor.

Tony crouched down, picking up the housing and inspecting it. The coils were all shot, blown apart and missing. The chunk of badassium- The name he’d given to his new element, though unofficial- was missing as well, likely turned into dust. Around the reactor’s outer edge was a thick black paste; Dead nanites, probably left over from the human-sized capacitor. Surprisingly, the actual casing itself was intact, for the most part. The front glass was gone, but the vibranium shell had withstood the impact- Which, now that he thought about it, was probably the only thing stopping shrapnel from blowing his chest open like the mortar had done in Afghanistan.

Woops.

His physical check over and done with, Tony made his way back to the cockpit. Subconsciously, he’d tucked the arc reactor into his pocket, the gentle weight a pleasing and comforting backdrop to the dreary future ahead.

Dropping into a flight seat, he buckled in, ensuring everything had stayed intact during his short stint away- The _Milano_ was still on course, and nothing had melted yet, which was a good sign. Tony took the reactor from his pocket, tossing it between his hands. He felt… Strange, without it on. Even once he’d gotten the shrapnel removed, an arc reactor was almost always attached to his person in one way or another. The wrist gauntlet, for example, was powered by a micro-scale one. The technology made him feel safe, and grounded; In a way, it reminded him of everything he’d worked for, after Afghanistan. Innovation and change were a part of his life more than anyone’s- He _is_ Tony Stark, after all- but no matter how advanced arc reactors got, he still felt old-fashioned with them. Like they were always something he could rely on.

The wreckage in his hands was a clear metaphor, he knew. Not one he needed to delve into.

Tony leant back into the seat, letting the warmth from the stars soak into his skin. It felt like home, too. Like soft summer days, spent with his friends on one of the Avenger’s Tower’s many balconies.

With a soft sigh, he closed his eyes, and slipped into dreams.

∞

_“A pair for five, and a run for seven.”_

_Steve, Rhodey, Sam, Tony, Natasha and Clint had gathered around a patio table, shirley temples in hand, to play Cribbage. Rogers, old man that he was, insisted on the game; It was one of his favorites, apparently._

_“Hot damn, Tones! Not too shabby!”_

_Rhodey clapped his partner on the back as Tony moved their peg along the track, pulling well ahead of their opponents._

_“Oh, goody gee, the supergenius is a card shark, too. How fortunate,” Clint sassed, slouching in his chair as he pouted, giving his newly-dealt hand a glare like it owed him money._

_Natasha elbowed him in the ribcage, causing a bout of protest before she played her card. “Ten. And shut your whining, Barton. Maybe if you didn’t give me a_ shit crib _every time I was the dealer, we’d make it further along, eh?_

_The archer frowned, dropping his own move onto the table. “Twenty-one for two. And what? I’m, like, one out of-“He stopped to count every player at the table, forehead creased in concentration. “Five people responsible for that! If anything, you should blame Steve. He’s almost as bad as Tony.”_

_The supersoldier laughed as Clint moved his peg forward, playing the next card. “Thirty-one for three. I’m nowhere near as bad as Tony. At least I enjoy the spirit of the game; He just wants to kick our asses.”_

_The genius grunted in affirmation, studying his own hand while sipping his ruby-red beverage. “Hey, if you all want to bite my dust, that’s on you. Plus, Rhodes would make his pouty face if I didn’t carry him to victory.”_

_Rhodey punched him in the shoulder, putting down a ten. “Twenty-one for two. And the pouty face would be a result of having to deal with your tantrum once you lost, Tones. You’re like a child playing Uno.”_

_Tony tossed a four into the fray, shuffling his hand between deft fingers. “Bad comparison. A child playing Uno always loses.”_

_They went on for hours, bantering back and forth, playing round after round. Him and Rhodes pulled first, unsurprisingly, winning more than half of the rounds. When the sun started to set, and everyone decided Thai sounded good for dinner, they abandoned Tony with the deck and mess of cups and went to get dressed._

_And, as he tossed dyed-red sticks of celery into a garbage bag, he knew that he’d rather have it no other way._

_∞_

It turns out that Quill is (was) far more infatuated with the 70’s than Tony had thought. He’d stumbled across a giant collection of music, from Cat Stevens to Queen, and had been passing the time combing through them all. The change in his daily routine- From self-loathing and depression to anxiety and anticipation- Was, pun intended, a stark one.

Epsilon was less than a day away, now, and Tony wasn’t quite sure how to feel. The dwindling feeling of hope he’d been feeling over the past few days was steadily growing stronger; If all his physical checks and diagnostics were right, then the _Milano_ could make a risk-free landing on the planet’s southernmost continent in the next twelve hours or so.

Tony sang along to the first four tracks of Electric Light Orchestra’s _Out Of The Blue_ as the ship decelerated, standing to run some final checks on the supplies he would need to look for. Tony was still unsure of how to properly plot a jumptravel route, so he’d need to take some liberties- The flight computer had a map preprogrammed into it, but not instructions on how to actually _use_ it. He’s banking on there being some form of intelligent life still living on the surface; Otherwise, he’d be flying blind.

With five hours left, he checked on the chest in the back room. It was still secure, and a quick look over its contents showed no signs of leakage.

The picture fell out of the baggy longsleeve Tony was wearing as he leant to close the lid. The flash of Peter’s smile drove him mad. The kid just looked… _young._ Way too young, and he knew it was his fault that he might not see that smile again.

(You didn’t save him the first time. Better figure out a way.)

He tucked it back beneath his collar and returned to the cockpit. Epsilon’s horizon was silvery and clear- It looked like the weather was nice. Tony wondered if there was anyone alive on the surface to appreciate it.

The ship’s landing gear extended as the strumming base of Norman Greebaum’s _Spirit In The Sky_ blasted through the speakers. When a thick _clunk_ of metal against metal rang around the hull, he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

It was now or never.

The _Milano_ ’s rear split open, and the smell of fresh, clean _real_ air nearly knocked him unconscious. Tony steeled himself, stepping outside and into the light.

God, he forgot how the sun felt. It wasn’t the same, filtered through the quartzglass of the main cabin. It was warm, sure, but it didn’t feel this… Good. It was like the air that circulated throughout the ship: Liveable, but fake. Evidence of intervention.

It felt like prison, the more he thought about it.

The landing pad he’d touched down on stood on towering struts, suspended hundreds of feet into the air. Peering over the edge, he saw a great, vast forest below, stretching out into the horizon. Beneath the tower was a giant pillar- What he assumed to be fuel storage. Dotted around his little island were other pads, hexagons the size of football fields. It looked like a travel reception area; At the back of each, there was a shack-sized cube, probably holding an elevator of some sort to bring new arrivals down to the surface.

Tony wasn’t sure of his next move. He didn’t have any weaponry, with his suit gone, and there might not be any transport. In the distance, he could vaguely make out what appeared to be a broadcasting tower, a giant radio dish-like protrusion jutting out of its top. If he could make it over there, maybe he could find some information-

“Who the _hell_ are you?”

His train of thought was derailed by a voice form behind. Tony spun, shock rocketing through his body. He knew it was likely that he wasn’t alone on the planet- Ninety percent still leaves some room- But he wasn’t expecting company so fast.

The man in front of him was… Not actually too alien-looking. Aside from the fact that his skin was a near-perfect shade of rose quartz, he looked humanoid. He was maybe five-four, thin as a twig, with light, graying hair covering his forehead.

He stopped a dozen feet short of Tony, eyeing him suspiciously. “Well? Are you mute?”

“I’m Tony Stark. In turn, who the _hell_ are you?”

“Gladdus Thorton.”

Gladdus stood defensively, arms at his sides. He wasn’t carrying a weapon, which was reassuring, but he was on alert.

Tony took a step forward, sticking out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Gladdus.”

His usual snark was cranked down low, out of fear he might get jumped by the seemingly harmless alien. He was still getting the stinkeye- Gladdus didn’t look like he was especially thrilled to find a random, nonnative man standing on his planet- So the hand dropped, stance copying that of his companion.

“Why do you have the ship of a Ravenger?”

That question took him off guard. “What’s a Ravenger?”

Gladdus gave him a look of disbelief. “Space pirates? Mercenaries? Murderers with an honor code? Do you seriously know them?”

Tony narrowed his eyes, jerking a thumb toward the _Milano._ “That belongs- belonged- to a band of plucky jackasses. I don’t know what a Ravenger is, and I don’t have any particular inclination to find out,” He sighed, hand dropping. “Look, Gladdus. I’ve been stuck in space for the past three months. I’m trying to get home.”

The man looked over him carefully, posture still unsure. “Why didn’t you just jump somewhere? There’s a point for the universal port not a thousand clicks away.”

“Clearly, my jumpdrive was damaged. That’s why I came here. I need to get it fixed.”

Gladdus was beginning to look annoyed- Or angry, he really couldn’t tell. “And how in the Queen’s name did you damage it, then?”

Tony sucked in a breath, his heartrate picking up. “I was battling Thanos.”

At that, his companion’s skin ran white as snow, eyes turning into narrow daggers. “Why were you battling the Mad Titan?”

“God, you ask a lot of questions. He was trying to gather the Infinity Stones. I- My team and I- tried to stop him.”

Tony’s eyes dropped to the floor, silently saying: _we failed._

Gladdus looked to be on the verge of a breakdown. He was shaking, eyes full of fear and dread and something unplaceable. From his pocket, he fished a tiny box, and opened its lid. Inside were ashes. They looked like Peter’s, an indistinguishable mass of grey dust. “D-Did he do this? Did he…?”

Tony look up, fixing the man with a gaze equally full of sorrow. “Thanos won. He killed ninety percent of all life in the universe.”

The box crashed to the ground as Gladdus ran for the landing pad’s edge, vomiting onto the forest floor below. His entire body was shaking, and it didn’t take Tony long to realize he was sobbing, muttering something incoherent. He put a hand to the man’s back, rubbing softly. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing full well it wouldn’t do anything to quell the pain.

(He knew it wouldn’t have helped him. Nothing can help that kind of grief.)

Scooping the ashes back into the box, Tony returned it to him, sitting down on the edge alongside Gladdus. It took him almost an hour to calm down enough, and he fell to the floor, not saying a thing.

The sunset was beautiful. It cast hues of brilliant silver and green across the horizon, bathing everything in a soft glow. It would be night, soon.

Tony stood, offering a hand to Gladdus. He took it, grabbing the box as he stood on unstable feet. He didn’t look at Tony and, even if he had, there wouldn’t have been anything there. His gaze was deadened.

“I know you’re grieving, but night’s coming. Do you have somewhere to go?”

Gladdus looked to him, standing fully on his own, now, though a bit shakily. “I have a small cabin nearby. That’s where I came from, originally, when I saw your ship entering the atmosphere,” he nodded to the elevators at the rear of the pad, sliding the box back into his front pocket as he walked. “Come. You can stay with me, for the night.

Tony trailed close behind, eyes glued to the floor. Gladdus’s grief had reignited his own- Feelings of sadness and lost and guilt churned in his gut, painful and sharp. He wondered if they would every go away, now.

_Could anything be the same?_

∞

The cabin was cozy. Small, and built from the same greenish wood that inhabited the forest, it had one bedroom, a kitchen, and a double living-dining room. Gladdus had made tea, giving Tony a cup and joining him at the table. Neither of them had said a word.

The tea was good. It was the first hot beverage- first hot thing, actually- that he’d had in months. As Tony sipped, he kept glancing at the man across the table. Gladdus’s eyes were glued to his cup, unblinking and cold.

When the room was drenched in darkness, he finally spoke. “I was playing with my grandkids when it happened.”

Tony starts, the announcement sudden. He elects not to speak.

“One second, they were running around in the front yard, and the next-“He cuts through the air with a horizontal hand, “They were dust. Gone.”

Gladdus sniffs, pushing his mug to the side as he looks Tony in the eye. “I checked on my wife. She was gone, too. You can’t understand the confusion. Hysteria, really. I made my way to the relay station, over on the western island. No one there, either. Just piles of ash.”

“I checked the array for incoming and outgoing signals. The logs showed regular data, information flooding in, then it got cut off. At first, I’d thought someone had jammed the signal, but I sent a message out to the other stations on the planet. No interference.”

The two men locked eyes, and Tony could see the pain in his companion’s expression, the utter, horrible _understanding._

“I waited a week. No replies, nothing. Police channels were dark, military activity was nonexistent, news sites were blank. Eventually, I realized that I might be alone.”

Gladdus’s eyes dropped back to the table, his voice quiet. “Epsilon is a small planet. Aside from the ports, most things are automated. It’s why I moved here, with my wife. I used to be an engineer, on a busier planet. Fixing up comm arrays. It was good work, but it was hard, and it was tiring. This place- It’s big, but not a lot of folks on it. Good spot to wind down.”

Tony felt a deep wretch of pity in his stomach. “You’ve been living here, alone, for the past three months?”

The man nodded, picking at a dry cuticle. “If my theory’s right, then I’m the last citizen of this planet. Shit luck, I suppose.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, but it felt like years. Finally, Tony spoke up. “I knew what happened, when they started disintegrating. It was…” He searched for a word but couldn’t find one. “My kid- Well, not _my kid_ , but- Just, the kid on my team, he went last. He said he felt weird. Said something was wrong.”

Tony gritted his teeth, staring out of the window at the silhouettes of trees. “I held him when he died. He apologized, the fucker, because he’d stuck on the ship when I told him to stay on the ground.”

“You wouldn’t have been able to stop it, even if he was. At least he died near someone he loved.”

Gladdus was looking at Tony, now, in the way only someone who really, _truly_ understands can. “I was angry at myself, those first few weeks. Because I wasn’t there with Gloria. I felt like I should’ve been, though I knew, logically, I couldn’t have known what was going on.”

Tony shrugged; his gaze still fixed on the trees. “Its not your fault. No one could have known, not quick enough. Thanos just- Snapped. And everything was gone.”

He looked across the table and met a pair of deep, knowing eyes. “How could someone do that, Gladdus? I don’t get it. I’ve fought aliens and terrorists and AIs hellbent on annihilating the Earth and even I can’t fathom how you just- Decide to do it. Take out so much life without a second thought. Without guilt or remorse.”

Gladdus rested his chin on steepled fingers, leaning on the table as he spoke. “Some people, Stark, don’t believe in such things as morals and guilt. I’ve lived all one-hundred and seventy years of my life seeing people with no care for the good in the world.”

“Once, I was working a repair job on this little moon called Echo Four. It was a research station, I think. Studying gravitational effects on time dilation, or something of the sort. Second day on the job, a band of mercenaries comes through and kills forty of the one-hundred residents. They were looking for iridium crystals.”

He barked out a harsh laugh, then, laced with nothing but bitter hate. “All the iridium was gone. Used up by me, while I was stabilizing the broadcast antenna. They shot the station commander in the head when he told them.”

Tony flicked his eyes to the ground, absorbing the story. One hand picked against the woodgrain as Gladdus continued. “The bastard in charge told me I was lucky, because they ‘didn’t kill the help’. So I was left alone, covered in the blood of the men I had worked for, and ultimately came to consider friends. They were good people, Stark. Good men and women, just trying to do work that mattered. Those men didn’t care. Neither does Thanos.”

The old man groaned as he stood, taking his cup to the sink and cleaning its contents as he spoke. “Tomorrow, we’re going to the eastern continent to repair your ship’s jumpdrive. For now, you need to sleep. You look like shit.”

Tony almost laughed, settling instead for a bemused huff. He handed him the mug when he reached for it, and stood, jerking his thumb outside. “Mind if I take the patio? Its-“He cut himself off with a chuckle, eyes scanning the ground. “Not much fresh air in space.”

Gladdus nodded, a small smile spreading over his lips. It made his forehead and cheeks wrinkle. “Yeah. I’ll grab you some blankets.”

A few minutes later and Tony was propped up on a deck chair, staring up at the sky. A lack of light pollution left the stars shining brightly- Not as bright as they are in space, because of the atmosphere, but still twinkling- And the cold night air tickled against his exposed skin. It felt good to be outside again. Really, the more he thought about it, the more he realized how many things he missed, being trapped in that tin can, floating through the black.

Taking in a deep breath, enjoying the scent of leaves and dirt and all the living things, Tony drifted off into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

∞

Gladdus was an incredibly talented engineer, it turns out. Within a few hours, they’d diagnosed the issue with the jumpdrive- A fried navigational matrix, which triggered a safety measure, stopping the thing from firing the ship into some random portal- and had begun repairs.

Tony found space tech to be both the coolest and most annoying thing he’d ever worked with. The solutions to problems he’d been working himself were ingenious, though they used materials and techniques he’d never even dreamt of. But their complexity made even the most basic of tasks arduous; Soldering the power contacts for the new nav plate they fabricated took _ages_ , mostly because he kept extruding more material than necessary, but still. It was intricate work, and it took time, but they finished with plenty of hours to spare.

“Well… Thank you. For everything.”

Tony stuck out his hand, much like he had the previous day, and was met with one in return. Gladdus nodded, and gave that small smile of his, quiet and understanding. “You’re welcome, Tony.”

The two began loading cargo into the ship- Crates of food, and additional parts, in case something else failed in the remainder of his short journey. Setting down the final chest, Gladdus reached into his pocket, fishing out the small, ornate box, and stood.

“You’re not just planning on getting home. I can see it in your eyes.”

Tony met his gaze, giving him a gentle nod in confirmation. The man seemed to understand, stepping forward and placing the keepsake in his hands before closing his own eyes. “I can’t live with them, anymore. The ghosts. If you succeed in bringing them back, however you plan on it doing it, know I will be thankful. No matter how far I am.”

Gladdus opened his eyes, the look he gave Tony more unforgettable than he’d ever seen. He closed his hands around the box, clamping it tightly. “I’ll bring them back. I’ll bring _everyone_ back. I promise it to you.”

He wasn’t lying. There wasn’t anything that could stop him, now.

“I hope you get to see your boy again. Love like that doesn’t come around, all too much.”

And, with a pat to the shoulder, his companion turned on a heel, marching out of the _Milano_ ’s belly and into the crisp afternoon air of Epsilon.

As Tony fired the engines, lifting his ship from the landing pad, he saw Gladdus below, shoulders high and arms crossed. He looked hopeful. Determined.

And, when he reached the first jumpoint, the course plotted in the flight computer, he thought to the rear of the ship, where the case of ashes now held another vigil.

As space lensed, and his vision blurred into lines longer than time, Tony understood, then. He would do anything to get Peter back. To fulfill his promise- To bring _everyone_ back.


	3. Roses, Roses, All The Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, well, shit, this was way way longer than I thought it would be.  
> This took me a week to write. I hope its not too bad. Also, its 14k words, so settle in, folks.

_Pepper Potts is no foolish woman. She’s been in the close company of Tony Stark for long enough to know when things go wrong- Really wrong. As in, don’t wait up for dinner, I’ll be a few days kind of wrong._

_He told her not to wait up. It was good warning, to be fair- Three months was a long time to keep Spaghetti Aglio e Olio warm and ready for serving. She just wished he’d made it back in time for Happy’s funeral._

_It was small and private. The Hogans didn’t have an extensive bloodline- His sister and cousin were the only living family. The three of them, along with Rhodey and May, made up the party. Happy had always said he’d wanted a good old-fashioned Catholic funeral; A strange fact, considering he was a devout atheist. Lacking a body, they managed as best they could, with a wake and prayers and a priest and holy water._

_Thor was the only living member of the Avengers, as far as any of them knew._

Pepper tried not to think about Tony.

_He’d been the one to spread news of Thanos’s plan. The world government was in shambles, even though Earth had gotten lucky; About five billion people were left alive, but most world leaders, as well as the entirety of the U.N.’s representatives, were gone. In light of a power vacuum, most remaining countries that weren’t already facing devastation had convened an emergency meeting- Funny, that it took them until sixty-five percent of the population was annihilated to finally work together- To discuss further action. The U.S., along with China and Russia, demanded that Thanos be hunted down and killed. Some of the more peaceful parties aimed their focus at repairing aid networks, to get help to those who needed it._

_Nothing changed. Negotiations happened every day and were broadcasted around the clock. Probably because everyone lost somebody, and none of them wanted to face the grief. In between caring for Morgan and comforting grieving family and friends, Pepper organized Stark Industries-supported aid programs across the globe._

_It was busy work._

She really, really tried not to think about Tony.

_May had called her in a frenzy when the snap happened. Peter hadn’t came by the apartment, she’d said, and he hadn’t called or texted. Pepper talked her down, told her to remain calm._

_Later, when they both realized he wasn’t coming home, she invited the woman to the cabin, too. It was remote, and peaceful. A good place to mourn. She accepted. May was nice company; She kept things clean, and cooked three times a week- Most of it turned out burned, and they laughed before ordering takeout, but she got a little better- and watched after Morgan when Pepper was on business calls or working to control the pandemonium encompassing her company and the world. It was nice to have someone around._

_Her daughter was perceptive. When May had shown up without Peter, she’d asked where her big brother was. She didn’t get an answer, just a hug and a kiss. When she listened in on the news one day, and realized the world was in shambles, she asked where Daddy was. She didn’t get an answer then, either._

_Morgan was born after Ultron. She knew that Tony was a superhero, and a big one, too. When Pepper shook her head the second time she asked about her dad, she had asked if he was hurt, like he was after he went to Siberia- She pronounced it like Sni-berry-a, which would’ve been adorable, if the circumstances weren’t… What they were- and only got a stiff nod, a hug, and a juicepop._

_It was July tenth, 2018, when Pepper got a call from Rhodey, who told her to meet him at the compound ASAP, and promptly hung up. She asked May to watch her daughter, to which she gladly obliged, and rushed out the door in a pair of capris and a sun-bleached Smashing Pumpkins shirt that Tony used to wear during yardwork._

_Avengers Compound was immaculate. It was fully automated, in proper Stark fashion, the grass trimmed and flowers perky. The only thing marring its’ intricate lawn maintenance was a literal_ space ship.

_She found them sitting at a dining table, sipping on coffee. Tony looked… Thin. Tired. His hands were covered in grease, and his skin was potmarked with burns and scratches and bruises._

_The look in his eyes, though, was burning. She didn’t know with what, really. They’d looked at each other for minutes, rooted to their spots in shock, before he gave her that snarky, shit-eating grin and asked: “Missed me?”_

_∞_

Tony didn’t know how he was going to feel when he first saw Pepper again, or how he was going to react. Flurries of kisses and too-tight hugs seemed appropriate for the situation, but all he ended up with was a bloodstream flooded with adrenaline and a dumb smile, his hands still glued to the boiling hot cup of coffee that was burning the skin off his hands.

The kisses and hugs came, of course, after a minute or two. They felt rushed and heavy, like they were making up for lost time, but they felt _amazing._ After an awkward cough from Rhodey, the two settled into a close hold, her head resting on his chest. “Mind giving us a sec, Sourpuss?”

Best friend that he is, the pilot held up his hands in surrender, turning on a heel and leaving the room.

Once he had disappeared from sight, Pepper punched him on the shoulder, _hard._ “Where the hell have you been? There’s a difference between delaying dinner plans and going AWOL for three fucking months, Tony.”

He sighed, cradling her tightly against his chest. “I know. I’m back now though, OK? I’m back.”

Tony’s voice sounded unsure. She understood, then, in a flash, what the look was about. That fire was determination. Pepper had seen it many times before, but this- It felt more foreign. Stronger, somehow. “Are you?”

The engineer didn’t speak. He just buried his nose to her shoulder, breathing her in, like the oxygen was richer with her around. Tony didn’t want to ruin it- Ruin this. He’d just gotten it back, and it felt so _good,_ to be around people, again. People he loved. 

But it couldn’t last.

“I- I need to tell you something, Pep. And you’re not going to like it.”

∞

The lab was just like Tony left it. Chaotic, as always- There was a rotting, moldy donut in one corner, next to a half-empty cup of coffee he’d abandoned when Pepper demanded they’d go for a jog that morning. The blinds were wide open, bathing the otherwise pristinely clean chrome and matte black floors in sparkling summer light. It… Felt good to be back.

“Boss? Is that you?”

Shit. He forgot about FRIDAY.

She was constantly patched through to the suit and his glasses, but it relied on a globally interconnected WiFi signal- And, stranded in space, he was conspicuously absent of said globe to be interconnected _with_. “Yeah, Fri. It’s me.”

There was silence in the workshop as the AI processed the situation. Tony had been missing for a long time, something her protocols said would mean contacting remaining SHEILD operatives and the Department of Defense. But Mrs. Potts had told her to stop, when she’d told her of the plan. “Drop it, FRIDAY, please,” she’d said; “He’s not coming back.”

The lights dimmed, almost like their orchestrator was hanging her head. “Mrs. Potts said you’d not be returning, Boss.”

Tony sighed, leaning on a table and pinching the bridge of nose. “She had every reason to think so, Fri. But I’m not dead. Not yet, at least.”

He pulled over his favorite office chair and plopped into it, letting his body sink into the well-worn pseudo-leather and long-ago crushed memory foam. The thing had been a graduation gift from Rhodey; It came in a smashed cardboard box with a note about how he looked like he needed some new space to store his textbooks. He’d cherished it ever since.

“Not, yet, boss?”

Her tone carried concern, evident in the inflection. She’d gotten good at emotions.

“You’ve filled yourself in on the snap, yeah? Ninety percent of life, wiped out? Whole big bummer?”

FRIDAY blinked the laboratory lights in confirmation, pulling up several articles and analytical sources. “Yes. It has been… A source of international turmoil. I have been assisting Mrs. Potts in the aid programs, when necessary.”

With a bit of hesitation, she added, “It’s horrible.”

Tony nodded, fingers steeped in thought. Across the table, he spotted a family-sized bag of M&Ms, sitting open and forgotten. He snatched them up, popping a handful into his mouth and cherishing the taste of _actual food._ “I think I can flip it around. Fix things, more or less.”

He launched into an explanation of his plan- Quantum-scale multiverse travel, mixed in with a little bit of reality bending and one too many violations of physics, and she listened intently to every detail, logging it away for further analysis later. Tony was standing once he’d finished, bag of M&Ms in one hand as the other gesticulated. The plan was incredibly risky. A more than ninety-seven percent chance of failure, in some form. When she’d informed him of the alarming statistic, he merely shrugged, tossing another handful of chocolate into his mouth.

Pepper hadn’t taken his idea well. “Traveling through time with tech you don’t even know exists to save people you don’t even know you can save is the most Stark thing I’ve ever heard you propose,” She’d said, following it up with a punch to the shoulder and a head on his chest. “Please, just- Think about it, okay?”

He had thought about it. Maybe not for a long time, back on Earth. But really, he’d been thinking it since leaving Titan. So much life was lost. So much of the _world_ was lost, the universe. Families were decimated. Meeting Gladdus was evidence that the life of entire planets was just wiped out of existence- Nothing could recover from that. Not really. Maybe networks could be rebuilt, and governments could stitch themselves back together again, but the memory of those they’d lost wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t ever get better.

Tony had thought, for a while, that maybe that was Thanos’s plan. To make everything suffer, like he had. The titan was lonely, he had to be. You didn’t lose everything you knew while still keeping your sanity.

Then, he’d thought, upon further stewing, that the fucker was just insane. Statistically and logically speaking, it didn’t matter how much life you wiped out, it would replenish. That’s just what life does.

Ultimately, Tony was a man of science, and he always would be. But there was this part of him, this tiny fraction of his being, that was always more idealistic. That was the Iron Man part- The part that believes in heroes and fate and doing good for other people. The part that told him not to blame everything on Thanos.

Maybe the Titan was insane. Maybe he was lonely, and angry at the universe, and wanted to do something to get back at it. But he needed help, too, like everyone else. He didn’t get it, and now people were dead.

_When you can do what I can, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you._

If, when it came to Tony’s snap, Thanos showed up at his doorstep and tried to take away this chance at redemption, he’d kill him. There wasn’t any point in lying, there. The bastard had taken away too much from people to be considered innocent.

But, if he didn’t, and assuming he survived, there wouldn’t be any hunting. No deep-space scans and no searching for clues like an ass-backwards Mystery Incorporated, just time. He’d make up with Rogers and spend time with the kid and Morgan and Pepper, and think of Gladdus with his family on Epsilon, drinking tea and playing on lawns. He’d let himself be happy, for once, and enjoy the amazing life he gets to live.

Because, if he doesn’t, then what’s the point in fixing it anyway?

“FRIDAY, I got a job for you.”

“What is it, boss?”

Finishing off the rest of his chocolatey treat- _damn, that was like, a pound of candy-_ Tony Stark looked at his ceiling, his eyes narrowed in determination. “Do a deep search on Scott Lang, Hank Pym, and Hope Van Dyn. And get me Pym’s research on quantum worlds.”

He dunked the bag into the trash with a perfect no-look, cracked his knuckles, and pulled up a holo display. “We’ve got work to do.”

∞

Tony was still catching up to the lists.

They were long. Terrifyingly long. Multi-page details of every person who had died from, or as a result of, the snap. The database was accessible to everyone, compiled by a Stark Industries algorithm. He was skimming it while looking over Pym’s papers, hardly paying attention.

When he saw Happy’s name out of the corner of his eye, his blood ran cold. He checked the list again, searching for him by name, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. The same sense of dread he’d felt when Peter died, the bone-seeping, skull-numbing feeling of pure _loss_ hit him like a bus. He was frozen, staring at the name and the picture attached to it.

(Love like that doesn’t come around too often.)

Tony was crying. Tears slipped from his eyes and fell to the ground, their splashes unheard.

Hands shaking, he reached into the collar of his shirt, retrieving Peter’s picture, snapping the string and placing it on the desk. The kid’s smile is infectious, even now. It pierces his eyes and goes right to his heart, like some kind of an emotional roto-rooter. The cold, shaky feeling vanished from his hands, and he looked at Happy’s picture, nodding determinately.

_I miss you, Hap._

“Fri, where are we with the Mini-Me crew?”

He stuck the picture into his pocket, spinning to study the monitors. FRIDAY pulled up several pictures from the database, detailing Hank Pym and his daughter as deceased. Lang, though, was a different story. He was listed as a missing person- No hits on surveillance or any signature of his presence after the snap. Which was strange, considering that should mean he’d be marked as _dead._

Tony pointed to the man’s picture, isolating it on the main screen. “Why’s he missing, Fri? He fits the criteria for deceased.”

She skimmed through data, finding the algorithm’s explanation for the classification. “Apparently, his van was found on the roof of a parking garage. The ashes of Mr. Pym and Ms. Van Dyn were identified and weighed properly, but there was no trace of him. Authorities say there were several computer monitors with strange readouts at the scene.”

He felt the rush of a discovery, sitting up straighter in his battered seat. “Where’s that van now?”

“Storage facility in Long Island, boss. I’ll take it that you’d like a course plotted?”

Tony nodded, reaching for his coat. “If you’d kindly, dear. Have a car waiting in the port.”

**LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK**

It was an ugly ass van.

The security guard at the desk took some convincing- And an autograph, because most of the world still thought he was dead- Before letting Tony in. After FRIDAY confirmed the right cell, he jimmied the lock, stepping into a dank, dust-filled chainlink cage stacked with boxes and miscellaneous objects.

The van was a chipped, nasty-looking brown, tucked into one corner of the room. Shoving a football-shaped beanbag out of the way, he popped open its doors, confusion striking when he found what was inside.

Barely stuffed into the back was a strange, rectangular funnel, various cables stacked around and on top of it. Leaning further into the interior, Tony found a control board, and flipped the on switch.

The display lit up, showing a three-dimensional graphic of mobius strip. When he tossed random switches, dots appeared along its length, highlighting dips and ridges. Pressing a green button and turning a dial resulted in the strange contraption in the back spinning up, emitting an eerie orange glow.

Then Scott came flying out of the van’s doors, smacking into the fence with a thud.

“Ow, damn!”

He popped the front off his mask, patting out a fire that erupted on his thigh. He looked around, clearly discombobulated, before his eyes locked onto Tony. “Stark? What- Where the hell am I? Where’s Hope?”

Suddenly, he flew up, the storage unit’s dark, bleak look suspiciously similar to that of a prison. “Holy shit. I’m under arrest, aren’t I? You just arrested me?”

Tony gave him a look, sliding the signature pair of aviators down his nose. “Lang. Anyone who’d want you arrested now is dead.”

He stuck out a hand, and Scott took it, confusion painted on his features. “What do you mean? What happened?”

“Let’s get your shit out of here first, yeah? Then we’ll talk.”

Scott stared at him, fear blooming in his eyes. “Stark. What happened?”

Tony must have given it away in his posture. His nodded toward the door, gesturing for him to come along. “C’mon. We’ll talk when we’re home.”

“Stark. Where the hell is Hope? Where’s Hank?”

He was staring straight through the billionaire, leant forward like he was about to go for his neck. Neither of them moved, Tony affixing him with a stare full of unspoken apologies and quiet pity. “Scott. Please. You don’t want to do this here.”

“Do _what_ here? What did you do? Where are they?”

“I didn’t do anything. You gotta calm down, Pipsqueak.”

Scott just kept glaring, looking half an inch from exploding. “I swear to Christ, tell me what happened to them, or so help me-“

“They’re dead, Lang. Your daughter, Hope, and Hank are dead.”

Tony’s posture visibly sagged, the fight leaving his body. “Please. Can we go back to the compound? It’ll be easier to explain if we’re not here. Somewhere more comfortable.”

“Did you kill them?”

His eyes were full of fire and anger and fear, fists tensed.

“I didn’t do _anything_ , Lang. But I can do something to bring them back. But I need your help.”

“And hell if you’re fucking getting it!” He screamed, storming towards Tony. “Tell me what happened to them. What did you _do,_ Stark? How do you know they’re dead unless you fucking killed them yourself?”

Tony tossed out his phone, the display throwing up a projection of their faces, spinning slowly in the air.

Scott looked carefully at the details, pausing it mid rotation on Cassie’s photo. “Cause of death: The Snap?’ What in God’s name does that mean?”

He sighed, picking the phone back up. “Three months ago, an alien jackass named Thanos wiped ninety percent of all life out of existence. That thing-“Tony pointed to the van, and the strange device in the back of it, “Could be the secret to bringing them back. I get you’re mourning right now, and I get this is a shock. I went through the same damn thing. But, right now, we can’t afford to dillydally, alright? Because they might not be totally gone. Not yet.”

Lang’s jaw dropped, some of his rage fizzling away. “What- What do you need me to do?”

“Drive the van.” He tossed him the keys, spinning on a heel. “Follow the black Audi. Shouldn’t be hard; Bright side of universe scale genocide: Traffic’s a lot better.”

∞

New York was eerily silent. The normal city chatter of honking cars and bustling pedestrians was gone, replaced by the gentle rumble of engines and little else. People kept to themselves, now, lodged up inside homes that didn’t feel quite right these days.

Scott was disturbed, to say the least, by the change. He’d grown up a city boy, after all- Big skyscrapers and chipped concrete apartments, lined up row after row on desolate blocks. Bleary places, but homey. He felt like he belonged there.

That feeling did not transfer to the Avengers Compound.

A giant metallic building spanning hundreds of acres greeted him as he trailed Tony, sticking close enough to exist in the strange grey area between stalker and bewildered associate, as the two made their way to the workshop. The van was parked in a secure vehicle lot, awaiting further testing- But, as promised, he got to have a few questions answered, first.

Tony’s lab was _gigantic._ Way bigger than anything he’d seen before. The two took opposing seats, the engineer taking the office chair and him taking a cushy stool. “Well, Lang. What’s picking on your mind?”

He considered it for a moment. The shock of… Well, basically reentering a decimated society after three months of absence was still setting it. More than anything, though, he was curious about the next step. “What’s your middle step here, Mr. Stark? I get that you want to bring everyone back- And I’m all in for that, by the way, great end goal- But how does the quantum tunnel help you do that?”

Wincing at the formal title, Tony flicked off his glasses, setting them to the side. “Tony, please. Call me Tony. And, that’s a good question.”

Pointing to the ceiling, he said; “Fri, dear, mind giving him the rundown?”

FRIDAY lit up a holo display in his face, graphics exploding across its surface. “We are, quite simply, going to take the stones from Thanos moments before The Snap. To do so, Boss will utilize the tunnel and a subquantum-scale world tracking algorithm to find the ideal timeline- Likely one where some unfortunate circumstance doomed that particular inhabitant’s reality, resulting in their demise. Theoretically, once the stones have been procured and used to restore the lives of every lifeform in this timeline, then the other worlds will reset, falling in line with our master reality, the one with the most amount of infinity stones.”

Scott took a moment to process the plan, slack-jawed and confused. “O-kay. But how do you know there isn’t already a timeline where they already saved everybody? And, on the same note, how do you know we’ll become the ‘master reality’, once we have all the Stones?”

She blinked the lights, signifying a nod. “’Theoretically’ is the keyword, here. Boss was able to memorize the wave patterns of most of the stones during his battle on Titan. We have data on the mind stone, which just leaves the time stone. We’ll have to travel back to a timeline before Strange gave it away and collect readings. Once that’s done, we’ll be able to create a neural network to stitch together the data from other realities and compare them to ours. Again, in theory, once the second set of stones are in our world, we should see energy of the others be pulled towards us, like tugging a large magnet on a string over a sea of smaller magnets, with a sheet of plastic in between. Nothing should merge, but actions in one reality should reverberate throughout the others, effectively repairing all damage done by Thanos during the snap. Additionally, if said plan had been enacted across other timelines or realities, then we should see the effects around the same time we make our attempt. Either that, or they had a different plan- In which case, it doesn’t matter, because our snap wouldn’t change anything.”

He didn’t know what else he’d expected from a supergenius, but the complex plan left him slackjawed. “Holy fucking shit.”

Tony smirked, waving the holoscreen away and crossing his arms. “Right? Turns out, three months stranded alone in space gives you a lot of time to plot.”

Scott turned to the man, gaze resting on his. “And what if your snap kills you?”

He shrugged, seemingly careless about such an event. “Then so be it.”

Uncertainty was apparent in his posture and eyes, fear looming just behind the steeled irises as the smirk on his face dipped just a fraction.

He dropped it, gesturing around the spacious workshop instead. “So, what am I supposed to do? Was my only job to bring you a dirty ass van?”

Tony shook his head, his smirk returning with force. “You ever been to Georgia, Lang?”

**BARTON FARM, SHAPSBURG, GEORGIA**

Fetch duty. He’d been sent on _fetch duty._

Okay, Scott might not be the brightest egg in the basket, and he also might have next to zero knowledge about computer programming or how to literally engineer a method of time travel from next to zero information, but he knew some stuff. He was a good handyman, for example. Excellent cook. _Mean_ on the drums. Like, Jason Everman level good.

Whatever. He’d suck it up. Georgia was a pretty place, after all- Well, once you got over the giant, sprawling landscapes of nothing but fields and trees, and past the hordes of cows that were literally _everywhere_ , that is.

Winding up a road that seemed way too long, Scott was headed to recruit a guy he’d only met once to save the world. A little nuts, maybe, but most things were these days. He took advantage of a straight stretch of unpaved dirt to floor the Audi’s pedal, a little disappointed when the electric motors only made an aggressive hum and shot him up to 165 in less than two seconds, leaving him well past the wooden fences of a poorly maintained section of quaint farmland.

It looked like a nice place. There were several buildings, seemingly made from scratch, speckles over the property. Off in a field, there was a picnic table, stacked with the long-rotted remnants of forgotten food. Grass had begun to overrun the yard in places, presumably the result of no taming for weeks. The farmhouse only had one light on, in the kitchen, and the pickup parked right outside was beat up and smashed in places. It looked like the result of accidents, and many of them.

Scott groaned to himself as he parked. This wasn’t going to be a recruitment; It would be an intervention.

He trudged up to the front door, knocking at least twenty times- And hard, too- before jimmying the lock open with a piece of scrap metal and peeking inside. It was a total mess, just like the rest of the place. Bottles of whiskey and beer and way too high strength vodka littered the floor, alongside old chip bags and pizza boxes. The kitchen itself was a disaster, with plates stacked to the ceiling and garbage leaking out of every available orifice. The only cleared path was to the fridge, then to the opposite counter containing the microwave. It was depressing, to say the least.

“Mr. Barton? Clint? You in here?”

He looked around the living room a bit, wincing as the filth continued far into the other sections of the house. “It’s me, Scott Lang. Ant-Man. Little dude who got big that one time? I rode on your arrow?”

On the second floor, there was the sound of clinking bottles, and someone wading through them, sounding tired and annoyed. Naturally, Scott followed the clatter.

Clint stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at him with a foul glare hidden behind long, shaggy hair and a pretty substantial beard. He was wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants and no shirt, and smelled so strongly of a thousand different kinds of alcohol it was like he bathed in a liquor store after a flood. “What the fuck do you want, Lang?”

He raised his hands in a gesture of peace, stepping around a bag of dill pickle chips to stand at the base of the stairs. “Tony is back, Clint. He has a plan that he thinks could fix things- Bring everyone back. But he needs help, and he doesn’t have a lot of it, what with every other avenger getting wiped off the planet.”

The archer scratched his stomach, scowling with virulent distaste. “Why do you need _my_ help? I’m a bit busy, here, as you can see,” He waved around the mess of a home, sarcasm apparent in his tone. “I’m redecorating. Go get Thor or make an army of superbots or something. Just get the fuck out of my house.”

Scott crossed his arms, taking a defensive stance. This was like the good old days, with his father. Difference here is that his pops at least had the decency to brush his teeth after getting piss drunk. “No one knows where Thor is. After the Snap, he just up and left, and we don’t have time to look for him. We could get everyone back within the _week._ But not without more manpower.”

The two were in a standoff: Clint positioned like a tired, bored old cowboy, him like an outlaw with a hankering for justice. _God, what a lame metaphor_. “Look. I get that you’re not in the best of places right now, alright? Your wife and kids are dead, everything you wanted to live for is in the shitter. But you have the chance to fix it. We’re giving you hope here, Barton. Are you saying you won’t even bother trying to save yourself?”

“What is there left to save, Lang? I’m a convict, a murderer, and a drunk. A societal reject in every possible way. My family’s dead, my friends are dead. Are you expecting me to go grab a bow and arrow and kill a giant purple asshole just because it might offer me even a chance at salvation?”

He scoffed, waving a hand down the stairs and shuffling back off down the hallway. “Like I said, fuck off and get out of my house.”

Scott stared after him for a moment before following, stuffing a hand into the doorway Clint tried to close. “Can you stop being a selfish fucking bastard for one goddam second here, Barton? Please? And just consider what we could do, here?”

He pried the door open, exploding into a master bedroom that looked like even more of warzone than the first level. “I get that you think you’re beyond help, and maybe you fucking are at this point, because this place is a mess. But you know who isn’t beyond help? The people who got dusted. Those are people we can save.”

Clint fixed him with an angry glare. “What fucking right do you have to tell me about morals, huh? You’re a thief too, you know, and I-“

“My family is dead too, Barton.”

Scott’s eyes carried a kind of cold, hurt quality, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “My daughter is gone. My girlfriend is gone. A man I considered to be a mentor- A good, wholesome, legitimately hopeful person, is gone. My ex-wife and her new husband, both of whom I consider to be good friends, are dead. I haven’t even gotten to _mourn them_ , Barton. Because I got pulled out of a hellscape I’d been stuck in for three months and found out I have to go help Iron Man save the goddam universe. Your life is rough. So is mine. In fact, I’d wager to guess we’re about equal in levels of shittiness. But you’ve had your time to mourn, even if it was done through copious amounts of alcohol.”

He stepped forward, sticking out a hand. “If, for absolutely nothing else, could you come with me, so I have even half a second to absorb all this shit?”

Clint stared at the hand for a long time, seemingly taking in its every last detail. Stiffly, he raised his own, and nodded to the bathroom. “Mind if I shave and shower, first? Figure I should look pretty when I die.”

Scott huffed out a laugh, shaking his head and heading for the door. “Don’t take too long. I’ll be waiting outside.”

∞

The tracking algorithm was coming together rapidly. By them time Clint and Scott said they boarded the plane, he’d already stitched the first basic test together- Sending a half-eaten apple back six hours, then bringing it back- By the time they arrived.

Now came the hard part.

All the information on Stephen Strange cuts off mysteriously after late 2016- He went from a critically acclaimed neurosurgeon to a no-name on the flip of a switch. It took Tony some digging before he’d found a section in a Manhattan paper detailing a gruesome car crash that left the doctor with irreversible nerve damage, making him unfit for surgery.

After that, though, there isn’t much of anything notable- He spends millions paying for medical bills and experimental treatments, but none of it appears to work. In the last week of December, he sells his house and remaining car, vanishing off the grid for good. Which doesn’t leave many options for an interception.

Tony thinks his best bet is a period in between March and July of 2017, when cameras catch him back in the streets of New York. None of the footage shows him wearing the weird eye necklace thing he was on Titan, so its shaky at best. All he needs are direct readings off the time stone- Once those are done, then the rest of the plan can get into motion.

Lang and Barton arrive at the lab near the end of the day, the latter of the pair carrying nothing but a duffel, presumably full of gear. He looks like shit; Sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks frame his normally bright features, and his skin looks like it was recently cleaned after weeks of miscare. He drops the bag to the ground, a look of steely determination burrowing into Tony’s skull. “Well. I was told my help is needed. What can I do?”

The engineer tosses him a bottle of water and jabs his thumb toward a table in the rear corner with small bracelets sitting atop them. “Nice to see you too, buddy. Drink that, then toss those friendship bracelets on. First thing I’ve got to do is get readings for the time stone. Then we go kick Thanos’s ass.”

Scott looked about excitedly, an expression like an excited puppy plastered on his face. “Man, I can’t believe we’re gonna save the _universe_. This is awesome.”

Tony laughed, clapping him on the shoulder on the way to the nanofab plant in the corner. He poked around at it a bit before pulling out a heart-shaped arc reactor, its brilliant blue light reflecting off of the lab’s chrome highlights. “Only if everything goes right. This plan is… Hasty, at best. Let’s play it cool and smart, like we actually know this’ll work, yeah? Then we’ll have all the time in the world to be plucky jackasses.”

The arc reactor attached perfectly to the mounting points on his chest, glowing gently through the fabric of his vintage Pavement t-shirt. Across the lab, Clint was emerging from the bathroom in a shiny, metal and leather suit, tossing his newly emptied water bottle into the trash on the way. Scott looked about, confused, before pointing to a table in the far corner that held his own kit. “Should I uh- get suited up?”

The Avengers both smirked simultaneously, amusement plastered on their faces. With a mumble and sigh, he trudged to the back table, tossing the decidedly uncool pleather suit over his shoulder and heading to the bathroom.

Together, Tony thought, they made quite the ragtag group. Scraps of the past they all used to have. He hadn’t spoken to Clint since the man’s UN trials, and the last time he and Scott had been in the same city, he ended up paying about a billion in structural damages. The chances of them pulling this off- They were small. Slim to none.

But damn if odds would stop him.

∞

The van had been moved to a spacious storage lot with ceiling-length windows, the compound’s meticulously maintained laws stretching out past their horizon. Around the beat up Ecoline, the team collected, cabinets of tech and cables scattered over the floor.

Tony flicked a few more switches, initializing the quantum tunnel. “Alright, here’s the deal. I’m going to head back to 2017 and get readings from the stone- It shouldn’t take me more than an hour, which is about ten seconds here. Clint,” He waved the archer over, pointing to an overly obvious red button on the main console. “Once that count reaches zero, you slap that button as hard as you can. Scott-“ He pointed to a lever on the opposite wall, marked with something about emergency generator shutoff. “If I don’t come back within five seconds of the button being pressed, slam that switch to zero. It should revert my tracker and toss me back here immediately.”

The two men nodded, going to their respective positions. He knocked on the arc reactor and it whirred to life, armor spreading across his body. The Mark X armor glinted beautifully in the sunlight, scuffless nanometal shining like a newly polished Corvette. Though no one could see it, Tony was smiling like a kid at Christmas. New tech never ceased to make him happy.

“Alright, Tony. You ready for a ride?”

He nodded, giving a double thumbs-up. “Gimmi a throwback, Barton.”

The tunnel spun faster and fast, its dull orange glow filling the space before sucking him in, sending him tumbling backward in time.

Scott winced, hand readied by the lever. “That always hurts the first time.”

**MANHATTEN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, 2017**

March in New York is wicked cold. Tony hit down in an alley, his suit retracting and leaving him shivering in the icy wind. He’s about four blocks from Bleeker Street, so he gets to walking, arms wrapped around his torso for warmth.

Rounding a corner, he saw the Sanctum looming overhead, its large, domed window frosted by spring snow and frigid temperatures. Steeling himself, he gave the door three hearty knocks, arms immediately returning to curl back around his chest. _Why the hell didn’t he wear a sweater?_

The heavy oak made the hinges creak as the door was pulled open, a very tired looking Stephen Strange gazing down at his visitor with a raised eyebrow.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

The shock of seeing the sorcerer’s face again was not something Tony prepared for. He’s not exactly close to the man- He’d met him once then argued with him for an hour on a spaceship, after all. But watching someone die, then them just being there- Its odd. Like déjà vu.

“I need your help. Or, your cooperation. To save the universe.”

Strange raised an eyebrow, his suspicion clearly growing. “What, you can’t go find the rest of the Avengers? How do you even know who I am?”

Tony sighed, pointing inside. “Mind if I come into the inner sanctum? Its twenty-one out here and it would be pleasant if I could keep my fingers from falling off.”

The sorcerer stood aside, and he slid in, enjoying the warmth washing over him as the door was closed. He spun on a heel, hands now dug into his pockets. “I gotta see the glowey thing. Y’know, weird eye of the tiger necklace. That’s it.”

“Well, _that’s_ not gonna happen,” He said, smirking as he walked past. “It’s my sworn duty to protect the Eye of Agamotto- “

Tony cut him off with a nod and a wave of the hand, looking bored. “Yeah, yeah, Sorcerer Supreme, guardian of Earth, blah blah blah. I don’t need to take it out for a test drive around the block, just take some readings. Couldn’t possibly take more than a minute, max. Hey, you could even gently caress the thing while I do it, if it makes you feel better.”

Stephen narrowed his eyes, the suspicion mounting into downright distrust while he folded his hands behind his back. “I’m not Sorcerer Supreme. Not right now, at least.”

_Whoops._

“You’re not the Stark of this timeline, are you? You’re a different one. From another universe.”

Tony raised his hands in surrender, wincing mildly. He wanted to avoid this confrontation if it was possible, but lying to the man would probably only make him angrier. “Not a different universe. This same one, just in the future.”

They stood like that for a while, Strange glaring at him, his hands stuck in the air like a convict caught red handed, before the wizard asked a simple question- “Why?”

“That’s- A bit of a long story. And I don’t have much time. Just, lemme get a look at the stone, alright? That’s all I need, then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Stephen only crossed him arms, leaning on a banister. “I like stories. Tell me why you need it, and I’ll let you see the stone. That’s my stipulation.”

Tony grunted, looking annoyed. “Alright. Abridged version it is, then,” He took a seat on one of the stairway’s steps, rubbing his knees. “There’s this crazy purple douchebag named Thanos. He went around, collecting all the Infinity Stones, including the one you’ve got locked up somewhere in here. Once he got them all, he-“ The words got stuck in his throat, like he was trying to drink half-hardened concrete. “Snapped his fingers, and wiped out ninety percent of all life in the universe. I’m trying to fix that.”

Strange nodded, seemingly unphased by the news. “And what’s your plan with the stone’s readings, then?”

“Use it and its sibling’s data to construct a quantum-world tracking algorithm, narrow down the best place to nab em’ back to this timeline. Once that’s done, I’ll have built a neural net that should measure the readings from other reality’s stones, then give me the go-ahead to snap my own fingers. Reverse the second dust bowl, if you’d like.”

The sorcerer’s eyes somehow got even more narrow, down to daggerlike slits. “You think you’ll survive that? You must have no idea of their power.”

Tony just stared at the ground, rubbing his toe into a spot of dirt on the step. “No. But that’s not really the point here, in case you haven’t noticed, Copperfield.”

The silence came back. It was heavier, this time, and he could feel the doctor analyzing him. “Alright, you got the bedtime story. Now, stone time. C’mon.”

Strange stared for a few seconds more before reluctantly nodding, proceeding up the steps with a determined gait. “This way.”

The room holding the Eye of Agamotto was ornate, with ceiling-length doorways that shimmered with some kind of arcane magic. Under normal circumstances, he’d be asking a thousand and one questions. But nothing is normal anymore.

The wizard plucked the Eye from its place atop a claw-like holster, draping the leather foundation around his neck. The metal rested against his chest, still and purposeful. It had an odd weight to it, like it was pulling the world inward, toward the immeasurable power contained within. Before opening it, however, Strange looked at Tony, his ramrod-straight posture slipping. “I meet my fate in the future, don’t I?”

His voice was sad, laden with some kind of a painful understanding. Stiffly, Tony nodded, keeping his gaze pointed. “Yeah. Dusted. Along with a lot of other people.”

Strange looked to the floor, shaking hands opening the Eye. The readings didn’t take long- Just like he’d said. Once he gave the go ahead, it went back on its pedestal, looking regal and odd. The feeling, he realized, was tension.

“Can you make a promise to me, Tony?”

The man looked up once more, hands resting on holder’s edge. He looked… Afraid. Or, maybe it was mild concern. It was hard to tell. “I can probably already tell what it is, so why not.”

Strange huffed out a laugh, seemingly gathering his courage. “When my mentor, the Ancient One, died, I swore to protect this reality. To make sure no threat, mystical or otherwise, would threaten us. I did that because I believe every life is worth saving, no matter how lost.

“If you manage to get those Stones, and you can fix what this Thanos did, you have to promise to hold me to that oath. Because I’ve been close to death, before. It changed me, and for the better. But it was painful. I don’t think I can do it alone again.”

That… Was not what Tony was expecting. But he nodded anyway, affirming the man’s wish. “You’ve got it, Houdini.”

And, with that, his helmet flipped back into place, and he was back in the timestream.

Man. He’s really racking up a list of promises, isn’t he?

**AVENGERS COMPOUND, UPSTATE NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 2018**

The seconds slipped by like molasses through a colander. Clint stood shakily, finger hovered over the button watching the timer on his stopwatch count up- Eight forty-two, nine o-six, and, after what seemed like an eternity, ten.

The second the button clicked, Tony was thrown out of the quantum tunnel, stumbling a few steps before he retracted his helmet. He was unscarred- No rapid aging or horrific malformations. His helmet retracted, and he did a self-check, a little surprised himself at the lack of damage.

Scott jogged over, stopping just short of the two. “You get what you needed?”

Tony gave a thumbs up, then promptly sprinted to the nearest trashcan and emptied up his guts over the span of a minute. When he was done, he groaned, stretching his spine and letting the armor peel away from his body. “Yeah. Surprisingly, this is going pretty well.”

He jerked his head back toward the workshop, shouting for FRIDAY to download the data. Clint came up behind him, matching pace. He looked hopeful- Optimism shined in his eyes, giving his disheveled appearance a little more life. Once they reached the lab doors, he hopped onto a table, arms crossed. “What’d the wizard guy do about you mysteriously appearing at this doorstep?”

A shrug was his answer, followed by a contemplative silence. “Nothing. He let me scan the stone, and I got out alive. He seemed fine.”

The unuttered statement of _I hope we can bring him back_ clung in his throat, heavier than air, like everything about the Snap was.

Scott followed them into the workshop, helmet tucked under an arm. He slid onto a stool, eyes scanning over the rapidly moving lines of code on the main screen. “So. How long will it take to get the program up and running?”

Tony tapped a few more keys, spinning around and stretching his legs out on a countertop. He nestled his head into interlocked fingers, looking at the ceiling as he did the math in his head. “FRIDAY is building the neural net. Once that’s done, it’ll take a bit longer to teach it about the stones’s signature. I’m finishing up the tracking algorithm with the data I collected about the time stone, which shouldn’t take more than an hour. But we should rest, after I finish that. We need some sleep.”

The genius had a smile plastered on his face, big and wide and full of an unquenchable optimism. He looked like he could move a continent. “Get some rest, gentlemen- Tomorrow, we’re gonna save the universe.”

∞

He hadn’t talked to Pepper since the day he got back.

Tony knew it was a bad choice. I mean, he just pops back up after _three months_ and doesn’t want to spend every waking moment with his family, the people he loves? Total dick move. But he missed his wife. He missed Morgan, too, even though it was a different longing; He never thought of her when he was stranded, because thinking of leaving his own flesh and blood abandoned before she’d even reached double digits was probably the worst thing he’d ever experienced. But this weird, persistent hope that had suddenly fueled him, that sent him to Epsilon, and eventually home, was like a drumline in his skull. The beat told him to keep his promises- To himself, to Gladdus, to everyone. It told him to bring everyone home.

Even it meant losing himself.

That was, the more he thought about, the reason he’d delayed the confrontation. Because he _knew_ he’d have to tell Pepper he might not come back from his Snap. He’d have to ask her to be fine with raising his daughter, their daughter, alone.

Which left him with a cup of coffee- Extra sugar, no creamer- and dread in his stomach, knocking on the door of their room in the Compound’s east wing.

She opened it tiredly, giving him a soft smile. “About time.”

He chuckled nervously, holding out the coffee. “I forgot what time it was, so I brought you this. Kind of strange for twelve A.M., I know, but the last section of coding took longer than I thought it would, so I kinda got stuck- “

“Tony. Rambling,” Pepper said, accepting the cup and wrapping him in a hug. He sighed, melting into the embrace. “We need to talk about this,” She whispered solemnly, pulling them into the room and shutting the door with her foot.

Dropping the hug and falling backwards onto the bed, Tony nodded, rubbing his eyes with callused palms. “Yeah. I know. I’ve been kind of… Avoiding the issue, if you hadn’t noticed.”

She laughed, sitting down next to him softly, leaving her drink on the dresser. She leaned her head on his shoulder, rubbing his back soothingly. “I did.”

“I’ll just give it to you straight here, Pep. I’m putting all my eggs into one basket, here. If I don’t do this tomorrow… Then I’m good as dead. Everything leading up to this moment- Loki, Ultron, the accords, hell, even Afghanistan, it was all for this,” He burrowed his nose into her hair, closing his eyes as he spoke softly. “For you, and Morgan, and for everyone. For the life that’s been lost. Because ever since the wormhole, I’ve known something like this would happen. I knew it. In Sokovia, I saw it happen. Wanda showed me, back when she was more evil-y and not, well. You know.”

Tony took a deep breath, holding her head in steady hands, searching her eyes for something he didn’t know if he’d find. “I spent every moment after that asking why I hadn’t done more, why I wasn’t doing more. But I’ve come to realize, I… don’t think I could’ve stopped this. Stopped Thanos. A suit of armor around the world wouldn’t have stopped him. Nothing would’ve.”

Pepper tilted her head, giving him that look, full of Potts-brand understanding. Something only she could provide. “But you can do something about it now. And you’re willing to do anything to help.”

He nodded, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes. She put a hand on his cheek, giving him a searching look. “Tony, I’ve known you for a long, long time. So long that it’s certainly bad for my health. Getting you to drop this hero thing, to stop caring about what’s going on in the world and just live in the _now,_ is something I’ve never been able to do. I know that, no matter what I say, now, you’re going to do this. You’re going to try to fix things, like you always do. Because that is who you are. And that’s the man I fell in love with. It’s the person I married. I know there’s a battle going on in your head, right now, trying to figure out if you can leave, and if I’d be okay with it. You need to remember- Whatever happens to you, whatever war you have to fight and whichever god or evil mastermind you have to kill, you’ll always be the same man to me. You’ll always be a hero.”

Tony’s eyes were full of a deep, sorrowful pain. “I might not come back from this one, Pep. This might be the big catch. End-all be-all of my life. This could be it.”

She brushed away a tear that had crept down his face, pulling close into his side. “I know. And don’t go thinking you can die because I say this, but- I’m resigned to it. I’ll never be ready for you to die, Tony. I’ll never be ready for a world without you. No one will. And that’s something you’ll have to tackle.”

Pepper squeezed him tightly, giving him a gentle, vulnerable smile as she gazed into his eyes. “Every journey has an end. If this is yours, then I’m happy to have been a part of it.”

They sat that way for a while, held close to one another, before sinking back into the bed, covers pulled up over their chests. Tony brushed a kiss over her forehead, rubbing her shoulder. “I love you, Potts. Always will.”

She smiled, half-asleep, and burrowed deeper into his chest. “Right back at you, Stark.”

That night was the best sleep he’d had in months. And, as the dreams started to fill his mind, full of light and strange shapes, he felt contempt.

∞

Clint woke with a start, a sheen of cold sweat on his forehead, and a handful of scrunched up sheets. It was one of those nightmares without a central villain, where you’re swinging at shadows and everything feels wrong. He was used to them, really.

The clock read six fifty-four. Stark wanted to go over the gameplan at seven. With a rousing yawn, he wretched himself from the bed, tossing the soaked covers to the side and trudging to his duffel. From it, he pulled his combat gear, weapons, and the bracelets he’d be ordered to take the previous day. Unfurling his pants, something fell out of their folds, landing on the floor.

It was a polaroid of Laura and the kids standing at the beach. Vaguely, he remembers putting it there, after Ultron. They’d taken a flight to Miami, mostly because the tickets were cheap after the whole fiasco, but dually because he’d said Georgia’s peach fields and stretches of barren land were starting to wear on him. It had been a nice trip- They slept in a nice hotel, ate expensive food, swam in the ocean. On the patio of their room, they had been drinking some shitty wine they bought at the bar downstairs, the kids asleep in their way-too-expensive beds. The sunset was shimmering on the ocean as it dipped below the horizon, and she’d looked at him, pouring another glass. “Is this the end of it? After the giant metal guy, I mean. You finally gonna hang up the superhero gig?”

Clint had shrugged, looking at the water. “I don’t know, babe. I feel responsible for it, y’know? Like I’m the only sane one on the whole damn team. They need someone to keep em’ in check, a little grounding back in reality. Gods and mystical forces and infinity stones- I don’t know, Laura,” He took a sip of his drink, wincing at the overly sweet tinge. “Like, the kid. Wanda. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing, what’s going on. She just spent the better part of the last decade of her life in the hands of a Nazi maniac, then got enlisted as an Avenger and lost her only living family. I think I should be there for her. She needs someone to let her know where to go.”

“You’re a huge sap, you know that?”

He’d laughed, eyes still trained on the sea. The sun passed below the horizon, leaving only a shimmer, and he shrugged. “Someone’s gotta care about the world and the people on it. Otherwise, there ain’t much point in saving it.”

Clint folded the picture and put it into his back pocket. If nothing else, at least he could save his memories.

Downstairs, Stark and Lang were waiting at the kitchenette, drinking coffee and annihilating a box of doughnuts. They waved him over, shoving a Boston Crème into his hand and insisting he devour it. Scott stuffed another one whole into his mouth, speaking around the crumbs. “Hey, man, if you’re gonna die, you might as well have doughnuts for breakfast.”

After wiping out several thousand calories worth of sugar and carbs, the makeshift team made their way to the lab, where FRIDAY had pulled up a briefing. Tony, as expected, grabbed his favorite chair, the others random spots facing the main screens.

“Alright, Fri, give us the rundown.”

Data and visuals exploded across the display, outlining every facet of the mission ahead. They listened intently, absorbing every detail and workshopping what didn’t quite fit. Soon, morning slipped into late afternoon, and Tony was putting the final touches on the neural net while concluding the finer elements of their plan. “Alright. We have one job: Get that gauntlet away from Grimace Senior and into our reality. If we can’t take it off him, then we take the stones, and work out a solution from there. Under no circumstances can we allow Thanos to take them back- Otherwise, God knows what he’d do.”

He nodded to Clint over his shoulder, fingers still flying across the keyboard. “Barton. Gimmi your part.”

The archer crossed his arms, tight synthetic fabric stretching across his torso. “I get Thor’s attention before Wanda makes it to Vision. From there, I’ll I’ve got to do is make sure he stays close by with the axe.”

Scott scratched at a black mark on the polished metal of his helmet, lost in thought. With a prompting ‘Lang’, he looked up, setting the headpiece aside. “Once Thor cuts his arm off, I’ll slip under the gauntlet and enlarge it. All we have to do is get it back here, to the lab, and wait for FRIDAY’s program to do its thing. No teary-eyed goodbye-for-nows or delays. Just get it, then get out. No nonsense.”

Tony finished up his task, swiveling his chair. His expression was grim, but expectant. “I’m… Dubiously optimistic that this will work. The target timeline appears to be functionally similar to ours, but things go could wrong. Thanos could be stronger than I calculated for, or Uru might be resilient to the atomic-scale changes caused by whatever concoction is in those discs. Things might go wrong.”

He stood, hands tucked into his pockets. “I’m going say goodbye to Pep and Morgan. You guys do what you need to.”

The men nodded, and split their separate ways. Tony made it to the barracks in what felt like a blur, hearing soft giggling through the door. He knocked before coming in, smiling as his daughter adhered herself to his legs. “Hi there, Morguna.”

She raised her arms and he picked her up, cradling her against his shoulder. She was getting big- Almost too big to hold, but he didn’t care- And her tiny fists balled in the fabric of his t-shirt. “Where’ve you been, daddy? May and I were playing games all weekend, you and you weren’t there for Yahtzee!”

He laughed, stroking her hair. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’ve been busy. And I might have to go away for a little bit more, okay? There’s a big bad guy I gotta-“ Pepper’s glare stopped him from uttering the word ‘kill’, and he winced, mouthing a sorry. “Gotta stop. But I need talk to mommy first. Think you can occupy yourself with Elsa?”

Morgan nodded excitedly, sprinting over to the corner where a small pile of action figures and dolls had accumulated. Tony watcher her fondly before turning to Pepper, nodding to the rooms’ study. He shut the door, and turned, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s time, Pep. Lang and Barton are ready, FRIDAY’s on standby. If everything works right, we won’t be gone for more than five seconds. But once the gauntlet is in our reality, things could get dangerous.”

He sighed, dropping his gaze to the floor. “I mean, the whole this is dangerous, obviously, but we’re venturing into large scale annihilation with two sets of stones coexisting. I’ve got no clue of how the physics of this stuff is gonna work. I’ve made predictions, but, if they’re wrong, nowhere is going to be safe.”

She mimicked his pose, leaning against the desk. “So, what do you want us to do? Stay here?”

Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose, going over the plan in his head. “There’s a bunker under the dining hall. It should stop keep you safe against any minor explosions. I still wish you would’ve gone with Rhodey and May to Washington.”

Pepper shook her head, giving him a searching look. “No. You deserved to say goodbye to your daughter in person. Speaking of which- Why isn’t Rhodey here with you? Couldn’t he be helpful?”

He nodded, letting out a deep sigh. “He would. But, Pep, I’m not sure about the survivability of this thing. I can pull it off with the skeleton crew, and that keeps the overall risk to a minimum.”

Matching her gaze, Tony moved closer, putting his arms around her waist. “If I die, someone needs to be there for Morgan. As many people as possible. Because, if this doesn’t work, then I don’t know what to do. Maybe there’s an alien race out there who have some far cleverer method of time travel than me, and they can save the day, but for now? It’s just me, and two other dudes. That’s it. And that might not be enough.”

She hugged him tightly, arms encircling his torso. “You’re Tony Stark. You might be the only thing _capable_ of being enough. Which is why this will work. And you’ll survive it, and whatever comes after this, because that’s what you do. You’re a survivor.”

Pepper kissed him softly, and he leant into it, savoring every last second. She put a hand on his chest, slowly moving him towards the door. “Now. Give your daughter a kiss, and go save the universe.”

He smiled softly as his hands slid away. The door opened silently, and Morgan was still in her corner, having an extremely intense battle between Thor and a pile of mismatched Legos. Tony snuck up behind, flicking her nose and snatching her away from the warzone. “I gotta go get the bad guys, Morgan. You and mommy are going on a magical trip to the basement, alright? Just so you’re safe.”

She pouted, tilting her head sideways. “Why can’t we just go home? Its really pretty, we could go swim!”

God, what he wouldn’t trade for that.

“I’ve got a job to do, honey. Bad guys need butt-kicking, remember?”

Morgan giggled, her eyes lighting up with the kind of bright innocence only children can carry. “Mommy said that butt is a bad word. And that you shouldn’t kick people’s butts.”

Tony hugged her close, rubbing her back slowly. He wished there was some way to make her understand what he was doing- Why he had to do it. She was too young to process all this death, and the way it impacts people. Maybe no one could get it, really.

“Sometimes, bad guys deserve it.”

He kissed her forehead, setting her back down and kneeling. “Be good, Morg. Otherwise, I’ll sell all your toys.”

She opened her mouth in surprise, eyes bulging out of their sockets at the promised betrayal. Soon, though, her face defaulted to its normal, angelic state, and she gave him a mock salute. “I’ll be good! Promise!”

Tony hugged her one last time before stepping out, clicking the door shut behind him.

∞

The makeshift team of Avengers assembled by the Ecoline, doing last-minute checks on all their gear, both for the sake of safety and to stave off the task ahead for as long as possible. The quantum tunnel was spun up, its positioning locked to a date three months earlier, square in the middle of Wakanda.

Clint cleared his throat after more than five minutes of silence had slipped by, tucking a folded polaroid into his front pocket. He leant against the van’s door, one hand on his hip, and gave his compatriots a questioning glare. “Well. We gonna go save the goddam world again, or take a lunch break?”

Tony adjusted the cuffs of his skin-tight suit, undoubtedly layered with a thousand little technological innovations, and nodded, giving the ceiling a pointed look. “Well, Fri. We ready to get bodacious?”

The lights blinked in affirmation. “Console is prepped for my intervention, boss. Excellent Adventure Protocol is a go.”

He nodded, giving the chest piece two knocks and cracking his neck as the armor spread across him. “You ready to go, Lang?”

Scott shrugged, sliding on his helmet. “Why not? I don’t have any dinner plans.”

“Well then, ladies, let’s get to going. FRIDAY, give us a throwback.”

Tony fixed his eyes on the photo with Peter that he’d taped on the wall above his desk, letting the kid’s smile wash over him as time opened its maw, sending them tumbling like marbles into a whirlpool.

**WAKANDA, 2018**

The battle was looking grim.

Thanos had wiped the field- Everyone who wasn’t on the ground, unconscious, was struggling against broken and bruised bodies to get back into the fight. Steve was flailing his fists wildly, trying to manage a hit, but every swing was blocked. Clint, knowing their time was heavily limited, rushed off into the forest to find Thor, Scott trailing directly behind. Tony stayed hidden in the trees, waiting for the right moment to intervene. Too early, and he risked losing to an enraged titan- Too late, and his mission is failed altogether.

Rogers and T’Challa were swapping blows on the titan, trying to stall him long enough for Wanda to destroy the stone- It doesn’t work, because he already has the time stone, making all their efforts pointless- And failing. The Wakandan king is flung violently onto the ground, his body visibly breaking at the immense force.

The window was closing. “Barton, you got eyes on the big guy yet?”

Through static, the archer whispered, careful not to alert any hostiles to his position. “I have a visual, but he’s in the field- Getting his attention could take a second. You give me a distraction and I’ll get him as soon as I can.”

Tony sighed, readying himself. “Always gotta do the hard part, don’t I?”

He lunged from the woods, activating the secondary nanoparticle housing on his back. It exploded to life, flowing forward and wrapping around Thanos’s arms and shoulders, snapping bones as they slammed back into the ground and began to burrow. The titan bellowed, infuriated, and tried to pry the liquidmetal from his skin; A useless effort, because its already began to meld with the tissue, effectively creating a cocoon of metal.

A shocked Captain America looked on with awe, his face bloody and body shaking from an absurd amount of abuse. A strange mix of emotions hit Tony when he really looked at him- After all, the last time he’d seen him was Siberia, when he was left alone to die with a shield buried in his chestplate. But his… Lack of hobbies in space left room for recollection, and reflection. More than anything, he was just glad to see the star-spangled asshole again.

“Heya, Cap!”

Steve looked on, the same expression still on his face, as Tony flew forward, further reinforcing his restraints with additional nanotech, the silvery metal doing its job absurdly effectively. Thanos tried to flex his fist and use the gauntlet, but was interrupted by a blood-curdling scream and the sound of whooshing air, followed very soon after by an axe coated in electricity that seemed to glow with rage. It flung through the air in perfect concentric circles, slicing the titan’s powered fist off in one clean motion and leaving nothing but a stump.

From his left, Clint sprinted in, aiming an arrow at the severed limb and sticking it perfectly. Soon the gauntlet had expanded tenfold, and Lang crawled from it, giving a thumbs up.

Then the stones started to fall.

Their housing mismatched, they slipped from each slot chosen for them, hovering through the air like down feathers in a vacuum. Seconds started to pass slower, slugging by like hours. Clint was looking on in horror, Thanos in pure manic spite, Tony screamed, but he didn’t hear it- Everything was bent, like the fabric of reality disagreed with the state it was in.

_You mess with time, and it tends to mess back_ , he thought.

The time stone hit the ground first. It did nothing, floating there effortlessly, looking entirely out of place. The soul stone was next, clinking harmlessly on impact. Space followed suit, tumbling end over end faster than it should have been, glowing ominously on the forest floor.

Before Tony knew what was really going on, he was next to the gauntlet, catching the power stone with a gloved fist before it joined its brethren.

The pain was unimaginable. It felt like every piece of organic matter in his body was being heated into a sludge, his flesh burning and his eyes soaking with tears. Strangely, he thought, it tasted like iron and gold. Like metal. Or maybe that was the blood in his mouth; He couldn’t tell.

In his periphery, past the warning signs of power overload and critical structural damage, Thanos was looking on with awe. Rogers start to run to him before being stopped by Scott, who shoved him away, yelling something in his face. Clint was somewhere back there, too, unsure of what to do, because they sure as hell never planned for this.

And everything was going so damn _well,_ too.

A plan began forming in his mind. Gritting his teeth through the unbelievable pain- It was starting to feel like nothing, now, probably because he was either going into shock or all his nerves had been singed off- He spoke into the com, voice a harsh spit of blood and determination. “Clint! Get his fucking attention, _now!_ ”

The archer nocked an arrow, sprinting full speed at the titan. The restraints began to slink away, pulling in rivers of liquid metal toward Tony at what felt like a slug’s pace. Once they finally began to gather in a pool, he formed them into the shape of a gauntlet, slamming the power stone down into a socket. Soon, the nanotech was sucking up the rest of the stones with slinking arms, locking them in their own secure spots. The pain began to retreat from his body, very, very slowly, like bad tequila after a night in Venice Beach. He pulled the gauntlet towards him, attaching it to his back to ensure Thanos couldn’t grab hold.

Who, speaking of which, was making a charge straight for him.

Barton laid against a tree, probably thrown into it. He looked alive, no doubt thanks to the nanotech contained in his specialty-made bracelets. Guilt momentarily flashed through Tony at the sight, but he had more pressing matters to attend to.

There was no way he could win in a mano-y-mano fight with this guy. Even without an arm, he was absurdly strong, and could easily overpower him.

Oh, right. Overpower.

The excess charge warning was still flashing in the corner of his heads-up display, every one of his spare arc reactors flooded beyond capacity. Digging his feet into the ground, Tony powered up the unibeam, and fired it directly at Thanos’s chest.

The blast was strong enough to send the titan flying four hundred feet backwards, through layers of trees and into the battlefield, leaving nothing but a scorch mark behind.

Scott ran in a dead sprint to his side, latching a hand onto his arm and hauling him up. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here before he comes back. Where’s Clint?”

When Tony tried to speak, nothing came out but a strained choke. He pointed in the archer’s direction, stumbling into a run. Scott got there first, and pulled the man to his feet, urgency burning in his eyes as he spoke. “We have to leave. _Now._ ”

He blinked, like he just woke up from a ten-hour nap, groggy and out of focus. Med scanners showed a definite concussion- Not ideal time travel conditions, but they didn’t exactly have much of any choice.

The three of them synced their anchors, readying themselves. Tony wished he could stay, try and talk to some of his friends. He’d missed them.

As they began to slip forward in time, like stumbling into a shallow pool, he wondered if he would ever get to say goodbye.

∞

Tony had made a lot of decisions in his life.

Easy ones, hard ones, day to day things that seemed easy enough on the surface but started to weigh like boulders eventually. Before Afghanistan, he protected himself against the tougher decisions with alcohol and drugs and women and sarcasm. After, he did it with Pepper, and his suits. The will to protect people.

Occasionally, he has to remove himself from the protection, from his mental armor, and make an awful choice. Like whether or not to level Sokovia and kill its whole population. Or whether to fight half his friends for the sake of what he thought would be right.

The Gauntlet- his snap, really- was one of the awful choices.

It sat on a table, shining from the glow of artificial fluorescent lights above. Tony was alone in the workshop; Scott went with Clint to get a checkup, and though he knew he should too, after holding the power stone, he couldn’t find it in him quite yet.

He didn’t like problems he couldn’t solve. Not things that were challenging, and had some kind of a beautiful solution, but rather issues with yes or no answers. Those were the kind he hated most, because they couldn’t be solved by science or unbiased logic or a clever machine. Only by the things he knew, and the things he didn’t.

(Responsibility isn’t a choice, Stark. They’re dead. Now is your chance to fix that.)

Every second of his life since the wormhole had been leading up to this. Confronting a universe that was too big for him, too vast to be understood in any meaningful way. He knew, when he first had that glimmer of hope aboard the _Milano_ , that it wouldn’t end with him walking out of this.

Tony could see why they were called the Infinity Stones. If he looked at one for long enough, he swore he could see space swirling in its depths, like everything in the world came from that combination of perfect dark and brilliant color.

Glancing from the corner of his eye showed his neural net working dutifully. So far, nearly two hours after their return, the timeline had remained stable. In another few, the stringpull effect should start manifesting. A decision would have to be made, by then.

He returned to his pondering of the gauntlet for a long while, letting the program process, when error warnings began to blare. Studying the screen showed that- No, that couldn’t be right.

If the data was correct, the only other grouped signature of stones in this reality, belonging to Thanos, has just vanished completely. As in, every single one of them just dropped off his radar. Which meant one of two things.

Either they had been fired out of a massive, multi-directional canon simultaneously, or the titan had found a way to destroy the Stones.

“Fri, this right? You sure we’re not having a malfunction?”

FRDIAY paused a moment before responding, double and triple checking the inputs. “It would appear to be correct, Boss. The second signature has dropped entirely.”

Tony fell backwards into his chair, dragging shaking hands through his hair. That was… Not good. Without a second signature, this reality had just as much pull as the rest of them. If he snapped, this timeline would be the only one who reaped the benefits. Infinitely many people would remain dead.

Just then, Clint and Scott burst into the lab, readied for action. When none came, they lowered their defenses, scanning the lab curiously. Barton turned to him, eyebrow raised. “What in hell was that alarm for, Stark? You trying to kill us with heart attacks instead of time travel schemes, now?” 

“Thanos just destroyed the Stones.”

The tension could’ve been cut with a plastic butterknife. Lang lurched forward, trying to see the gauntlet, panic visibly shaking his frame. “What? How did he know we had them? He couldn’t have, there’s no way-“

Tony held out a hand, stopping his panicked rambling before it got too far. “We still have the set we collected. But his, this timeline’s original six, are gone. That means no helping the other realities, no saving the lives we could’ve before. Nothing. We’re done.”

The three stood there, contemplative. Before long, though, they were interrupted by Pepper, who ushered the other two from the room and gave her husband a ‘what the fuck is this about?’ look.

He peeled his hands from his eyes, giving her an exhausted look. “It’s over, Pep.”

She crooked her head, spotting the gauntlet sitting on the counter. “Doesn’t quite seem like it to me. What happened?”

The explanation was brief. Her reaction was, too- A drawn out expression of grief, loss and understanding, followed by a gentle, inquisitive gaze. “Tony… I’m going to propose something, here, and I need you to listen to me, because I know you won’t want to.” He nodded in agreement, and she continued. “Have you considered that you might not be able to help _everyone?”_

(You’re the only one who can, Stark.)

“But that’s why I did this to begin with, Pepper. Because I was supposed to help people. I was supposed to stop this shit from happening in the first place- Every version of me was, in every one of these timelines, every one of these realities. Ultron was just an amalgamation of all my fears, the civil war was a selfish riot. If I had worked to keep things together, we wouldn’t be here.”

Tony carded a hand through his hair. “This is _my fault._ All of this is my fault.”

She knelt in front of his chair, pulling his hands into her own. “You have the universe’s biggest guilt complex, you know that?”

He avoided looking at her, head hung low as she continued. “Ever since Obadiah betrayed you, you’ve been possessed by this… this drive in your head, where you think everything is your fault. Maybe it’s because of Ho. I don’t know. But you look at every bad situation like its something you can fix, and sometimes, it just _isn’t._ ”

Pepper sighed, eyes drifting to the silvered gauntlet atop the desk. It almost looked regal, the way it shined. “I know using that thing will kill you, and you know it. And I know there is absolutely nothing I could do that will stop you from doing it.”

Tony looked at her, bemusement apparent in his features. She continued. “You’re a hero. You haven’t always been, and I know that fact better than anyone. But there’s this… This thing with you, Tony. You can’t let things go, or put them to rest. I know, because I’ve been trying to get you to for God knows how long. It’s simultaneously your worst and best character trait, and probably is the sole reason we’re both still alive.

“Point is this. You might not have always been a hero, Stark, but you’ve always wanted to help people. And that’s not something you’re going to give up.”

“I love you, Pepper.”

She fixed her gaze on his, tears brimming in her eyes. “I love you, too.”

Afternoon was starting to warp into night. He considered, quite heavily, going to bed, and waking up with his family. Telling the people he’d essentially kidnapped that he couldn’t do it, that he didn’t have the will, wasn’t strong enough.

The picture caught his eye, taped to the wall. If he didn’t do this, he’d never see that face again. No one would. Trillions would have people just like he did, who wouldn’t ever come back.

He realized, then, that this wasn’t about him, and how much he hated himself, hated being the cause of so much suffering and death. It hadn’t _ever_ been about him. Whether he accepted it or not, it was always about the others. People like Gladdus, who were kind and caring and probably not insane assholes, that just happened to be living in the worlds’ shittiest game of chutes and ladders.

He’d made his way back from the brink of death because he thought the stars were lonely. He’d pondered how they’d get along, now, without something to feel for them, and he was angry, because nothing deserved this. The stars were lonely, as were the people around them.

He would fix it, now, not because it was his fault in the first place- Life wasn’t an action figure whose head had to be reattached. He wouldn’t do this because he made a mistake. Tony would stitch the universe back together, make the stars and the planets and the people and plants and the animals whole again, because nothing deserved to feel so utterly, completely alone.

Everything deserved something.

He snaked a hand into Pepper’s hair, pressing her head into his collarbone. “Its time, now, Pep. I gotta go.”

She had to restrain herself from shaking her head. The light was waning rapidly, disappearing beneath layers of trees. “What do you want me to tell Morgan?”

Tony breathed out slowly, kissing her forehead and standing. “That every journey has an end, Pep. Sometimes, even heroes have to finish their stories.”

With that, he grabbed the gauntlet, and began making his way toward the dock.

∞

The Stones tasted like copper and clover on his tongue.

They burned, for the first few seconds. Once the glove fit its form to his hand, he stopped feeling it. Instead, there was bliss. Like a walk in a meadow, or some other poetic metaphor. He couldn’t think of any, right now. He felt slow, and sluggish. His mind couldn’t focus on much, so he looked to the horizon.

The last of the light was slipping away, shimmering on the water. More than anything, Tony wanted to watch it forever, until the water was gone, and nothing was left. In the back of his consciousness, he knew he could do that, now, but knew he shouldn’t.

He focused on the promises he made. On the dreams he had, and the people he’d met, and just how _amazing_ his life had been. Slowly, his forefinger and thumb met with a clink. It felt good. Like everything had meant something, even if it was finite.

That’s what made it worthwhile, he thought. Just to mean something. That was enough.

He snapped, and before the darkness completely consumed his vision, he swore that the cosmos let out a big, heaving sigh.

∞

The funeral was small. Well, relatively. They held it in the cabin, and swathes of heroes swarmed the property, standing somberly in black suits and dresses and, in the case of an absurdly buff alien, an onyx vest.

Peter stood closest to the dock’s end, hands linked and hanging at his waist. He was dressed in a rented jacket and a clean-pressed button-up, and he _knew_ he was standing too stiffly, but if he loosened then he thought he might explode.

Morgan pushed the tiny bouquet out into the lake. On it were several bags, a small box, and a display case. Inside was the original arc reactor, polished to perfection and looking for all the world like it had just been made by Tony himself.

No one spoke as it floated away, slowly drifting past the small sea of roses gathered in the water.

Everyone paid their dues, giving Pepper their condolences. When it came for Peter and May’s turn, his head was hung, fingers fidgety and loose. Nothing felt right.

May patted him softly on the shoulder. Next to Happy, on the coffee table, was a small cardboard box with a sticky note on top. He looked to the three before picking it up, opening the container.

Inside, there was a folded note, and a picture frame, carefully wrapped in brown paper. He picked up the note, first, flipping it open and reading.

_Heya, Pete._

_I know this isn’t ideal. I didn’t plan on it happening either, really. But this is how it has to be. For everyone’s sake._

_You’ve got a lot of shit coming at you in the next few years. No one’s gonna tell you quite what, yet, because that would ruin the surprise. Instead, I just want to give you some advice, and a few heartfelt words._

_I love you, kid. I always have. I’m sorry I didn’t ever say it, but it’s the truth. You’re the best person I’ve ever met._

_Enclosed in this box is a framed picture of you and I, when we did that publicity stunt with the scholarship for May. It… Has been through a lot. It helped me through a lot. Helped me bring you back, actually. I want you to have it, kid, because the world is gonna ask you to fill some big shoes, and it’s really gonna suck, sometimes. Its good to have something to keep you grounded._

_You’re an Avenger, Peter. The best of all of us. People are going to look up to you, and they’re going to expect you to say some smart things and do some amazing feats, and I know how overwhelming that is. So, more than anything, kid, just stop and smell the roses, every once in a while. They might not be there all the way, but- You get my point._

_I hope things go well, kid. For you, the universe at large. But, if they don’t, I know you can handle it._

_After all, you had me for a mentor. What could go wrong?_

_-T.S._

He folded the note back up, and carefully set it aside before picking apart the photograph’s wrapping paper. It was a nice frame- Made out of simple black steel, a rubberized foot. He remembers the picture inside, too. It made him smile, though it was small.

Pepper put a hand on his back, rubbing slowly. He didn’t realize he was crying. “He loved you, Peter. More than anything.”

His hands were shaking as he put the gift down, and he looked out the window, nodding softly. “Yeah. He did.”

The stars twinkled softly in the early evening light, like spots of silver on a black sheet.

Stop and smell the roses. He could work with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the future, Im going to take on chapter works like this differently in the future. Parts of this I really enjoyed writing, others I struggled with. Regardless, I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Comments and kudos are very much appreciated. Thank you for reading.


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